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SPECIMENS 

OF 

MODERN    ENGLISH    LITERARY 
CRITICISM 


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SPECIMENS 


OF 


MODERN  ENGLISH   LITERARY 

CRITICISM 


CHOSEN    AND    EDITED 
WITH  AN    INTRODUCTION  AND   NOTES 

BY 

WILLIAM    T.    BREWSTER 

PROFESSOR   OF   ENGLISH   IN    COLUMBIA   UNIVERSITY 


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1907 

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By  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  October,  1907. 


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Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


PREFACE 


This  book  belongs  to  the  realm  of  rhetoric  rather  than  that  of 
literature  or  literary  history.  It  aims  to  use  critical  writing,  more 
completely  than  is  done  in  any  existing  text-book  of  selections, 
as  an  agent  in  rhetorical  study  and  intellectual  discipHne.  Books 
of  specimens  of  the  so-called  forms  of  discourse,  narration,  de- 
scription, exposition,  and  argumentation,  are  abundant,  as  well  as 
useful.  The  present  volume  is  less  a  complete  illustration  of  a  form 
of  discourse  than  an  analysis  of  a  fair  variety  of  pieces  that  would 
commonly  be  called  literary  criticism,  but  it  is  hoped  that  it  also 
will  be  useful  —  at  least  to  those  moderately  advanced  students  for 
whom  it  is  intended. 

The  point  of  view  in  the  editing  of  these  selections  is  one  from 
which  literary  criticism  is  regarded,  rhetorically,  largely  as  a  form 
of  exposition  and  argumentation,  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  as  a  body 
of  more  or  less  particular  theses  and  opinions.  Selections,  there- 
fore, are  given  without  abridgment,  and  the  important  points  all 
along  brought  out  relate  to  the  dicta  of  each  critic  and  his  reasons 
for  holding  his  opinions.  The  safest  way  to  begin  the  study  of 
literary  criticism  and  the  surest  progress  toward  a  sound  knowledge 
of  that  art  is,  in  my  opinion,  to  be  found  in  the  examination  of  actual 
critical  production.  It  is  certainly  wholesome  to  treat  works  of 
criticism  like  any  other  body  of  facts,  as  well  as  an  illustration 
of  some  theory  or  other  of  the  universe.  Supplying  material  for 
analysis  and  some  direction  for  study  is,  therefore,  as  far  as  this 
book  attempts  to  go. 

In  arrangement,  the  essays  proceed  from  the  simplest,  most 
matter  of  fact,  and  most  easily  demonstrable,  to  the  more  general, 
more  abstract,  and  less  easily  provable.  The  arrangement  is  as 
^  follows  :  the  first  eight  essays  deal  with  particular  men  ;  num- 
bers 9  and  lo  have  to  do  with  special  topics ;  and  the  last 
five  are  illustrative  of  general  discussions  —  from  highly  dif- 
ferent points  of  view  —  of  literary  art  and  morality.  For 
any  of  the  essays  here  an  infinite  variety  of  substitution  and  sup- 
plementation may,  of  course,  be  made,  according  to  the  preference 
of  the  teacher.  I  have  chiefly  tried  to  get  as  large  a  variety  as 
possible  within  the  limits  of  literary  criticism,  to  avoid  repetition 
of  type,  to  present  well-contrasted  views  and  methods,  and  to 
avoid  essays  of  too  difl&cult    a   character.     These    reasons   will 


vi  PREFACE 

account  for  the  omission  of  most  earlier  modern  critics  except 
Drvden  and  Johnson,  and  that  of  such  later  modern  critics  as 
Hazlitt,  De  Quincey,  Carlyle,  and  Lowell.  The  introduction  is  a 
definition  of  criticism,  and  it  contains  also  suggestions  for  the 
study  of  the  form  as  a  matter  both  of  intelligent  reading  and  of 
training  in  composition.  The  notes  and  questions  are  analytical 
rather  than  explanatory  of  the  text;  bracketed  footnotes  in  the 
shape  of  translations  of  phrases  not  clear  from  the  context  are 
the  only  additions  that  I  have  made  to  the  body  of  the  book. 
I  have  also  added  a  list  of  the  books  that  I  have  cited  in  the  course 
of  the  introduction  and  the  notes,  and  an  index  of  names  and  of 
topics.  Any  one  who  wishes  to  pursue  the  subject  of  criticism 
more  exhaustively  is,  of  course,  referred  to  Professor  Gay  ley 
and  Professor  Scott's  invaluable  bibliographies  in  their  Introduc- 
tion to  the  Materials  and  Methods  oj  Literary  Criticism. 

If  the  view  held  in  the  following  introduction  be  correct,  that 
literary  criticism  is  a  corpus  of  opinion  about  literature  deriving 
its  ultimate  sanction  from  personality  and  the  general  and  lasting 
acceptation  of  its  dicta  —  it  would  follow  that  any  collection  of 
good  critical  essays  would  form  a  suitable  and  desirable  subject 
for  rhetorical  study.  Such  valuable  collections  as  Professor  Saints- 
bury's  Loci  Critici,  Mr.  Vaughan's  English  Literary  Criticism, 
and  Mr.  Payne's  American  Literary  Criticism,  despite  a  trifling 
emphasis  on  national  rather  than  critical  issues,  are  well  fitted  for 
such  analytical  study  as  I  have  here  indicated,  and  I  have  profited 
greatly  by  them.  With  them,  however,  the  historical  point  of 
view,  the  desire  to  show  criticism  as  something  of  a  growth,  com- 
plicates the  question,  and  this,  in  my  opinion,  serves  to  darken  the 
counsel  that  is  of  prime  importance  for  students  at  the  outset  of  the 
study  of  literary  criticism.  Soundly  and  surely  to  trace  the  real 
hist()ry  of  any  body  of  literary  opinion  is  a  delicate  and  complicated 
task,  too  hard,  unquestionably,  for  most  college  students.  What  is 
of  fundamental  importance,  I  repeat,  is  for  the  student  first  to 
understand  what  the  critic  is  saying  and  then  to  discern  the  sanc- 
tion for  the  faith  that  is  in  him.  These  questions,  at  the  outset, 
are  best  kept  clear  of  theories  about  development  and  generaliza- 
tions about  the  history  of  the  art.  The  present  book  may  be 
termed,  in  short,  an  introduction  to  the  study  and  practice  of  literary 
criticism.  W.  T.  B. 

Columbia  University, 
July  12,  1907. 


CONTENTS 


Introduction 

Essays 

1.  Leslie  Stephen  :    IVood^s  Halfpence 

2.  David    Masson  :    De   Quinceys    IVritiags :    Classification  and 

Review    ....... 

3.  Samuel  Johnson  :    The  Metaphysical  Poets 

4.  Thomas    Babington    Macaulay  :    Air.    Robert   Montgomery 

Poems      ...... 

5.  Walter  Bagehot:    Charles  Dickens 

6.  Walter  Pater  :    Wordsworth    . 

7.  John  Mackinnon  Robertson  :    Poe 

8.  John  Dryden:    Preface  to  the  Fables 

9.  Frederic  Harrison  :    Ruskin  as  a  Master  of  Prose  . 

10.  Charles  Lamb:    On  the  Tragedies  of  Shakespeare    . 

11.  Henry  James:    The  A^-t  of  Fiction  .... 

12.  Edgar  Allan  Poe:    The  Philosophy  of  Composition 

13.  Matthew  Arnold:     The  Study  of  Poetry 

14.  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge:    On  Poetry  and  Poetic  Power 

15.  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley:    A  Defence  of  Poetry 
Notes  and  Questions  on  the  Preceding  Selections 
List  of  Books  referred  to  in  the  Introduction  and  the  Notes 
Index     


PAGE 

ix 
I 
I 

16 

45 

60 
80 
III 
126 
181 
202 
220 

237 

257 
269 

294 
307 
337 
356 
361 


INTRODUCTION 


The  once  common  and  popular  notion  that  criticism  is  fault- 
finding, more  or  less  direct  and  pointed,  more  or  less  elaborate, 
is  so  far  passing  out  of  use  that  it  may  be  dismissed  with  a  word. 
A  less  easily  disposed  of  matter  remains.  It  confronts  alike  the 
serious  student  and  the  trustful  seeker  for  authority.  No  one  who 
has  read  treatises  on  art  and  literature  or  essays  and  reviews 
of  authors  and  plays  and  books  from  the  hand  of  eminent  masters 
of  the  theory  and  practice  of  criticism,  can  fail  to  be  struck  with 
the  fact  that  critics,  like  other  doctors,  frequently  disagree  in  their 
judgments.  The  result  is  confusing.  A  prospective  theatre- 
goer, for  example,  sees  in  reviews  of  the  first  night  very  divergent 
opinions  about  a  particular  play,  and  he  may  "shudder,  and 
know  not  how  to  think  "  —  or  where  to  go.  Or  a  modest  seeker 
for  finality,  disdaining  all  forms  of  criticism  that,  like  the  foregoing 
example,  hold  a  taint  of  commercialism,  and  seeking  the  repose 
of  certitude  in  the  words  of  high-minded  masters  of  the  critical 
essay  and  the  acknowledged  arbiters  of  literary  taste,  will  be  struck 
by  the  fact  that  whereas  Arnold,^  for  example,  assigns  to  Byron  a 
place  second  only  to  Wordsworth,  among  the  poets  of  the  last 
century,  Mr.  Swinburne"  regards  Byron  as  no  more  than  low 
second  rate  and  wholly  inferior  to  Wordsworth,  Keats,  Shelley, 
Coleridge,  and  others.  Who  shall  guard  the  guardians  of  htera- 
ture? 

To  make  clearer  the  fact  of  this  discrepancy  a  few  pregnant  re- 
marks as  to  the  nature,  the  function,  and  the  value  of  criticism  may 
be  quoted,  "Criticism,"  says  Mr.  Collins,^  "is  to  literature  what 
legislation  and  government  are  to  states.     If  they  are  in  able  and 

'  Essays  in  Criticism,  Second  Series.     Wordsworth. 
^  Miscellanies.    Wordsworth  and  Byron. 
^  Ephemera  Critica    p.  26. 

IX 


X  INTRODUCTION 

honest  bands,  all  goes  well;  if  they  are  in  weak  and  dishonest 
hands,  all  is  anarchy  and  mischief."  Arnold,  in  a  frequently 
quoted  passage,  says,'  "I  am  bound  by  my  own  definition  of 
criticism:  a  disinterested  endeavour  to  learn  and  propagate  the 
best  that  is  known  and  thought  in  the  world."  Pater's  theory  is 
summed  up  in  these  words,^  "What  is  important,  then,  is  not  that 
the  critic  should  possess  a  correct  abstract  definition  of  beauty 
for  the  intellect,  but  a  certain  kind  of  temperament,  the  power  of 
being  deeply  moved  by  the  presence  of  beautiful  objects."  Mr, 
Robertson's  method  is  somewhat  more  argumentative:^  "It  is 
the  getting  behind  spontaneous  judgment,  the  ascertaining  of 
how  and  why  we  differ  in  our  judgments,  that  the  critics  so-called 
have  left  mostly  unattempted."  All  these  men,  though  at  odds  over 
method,  evidently  regard  criticism  as  a  high  function.  On  the 
other  hand,  listen  to  Mr.  Howells,*  "Every  literary  movement 
has  been  violently  opposed  at  the  start,  and  yet  never  stayed  in  the 
least,  or  arrested,  by  criticism:  every  author  has  been  condemned 
for  his  virtues,  but  in  nowise  changed  by  it."  And  again,^  "Criti- 
cism has  condemned  whatever  was,  from  time  to  time,  fresh  and 
vital  in  literature;  it  has  always  fought  the  new  good  thing  in 
behalf  of  the  old  good  thing;  it  has  invariably  fostered  the  tame, 
the  trite,  the  negative  that  survived."  Leslie  Stephen,  out  of  sorts 
with  his  life-long  profession,  wrote  to  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy  (May 
i6,  1876):"  "My  remark  about  modern  lectures  was,  of  course, 
'wrote  sarcastic,'  as  Artemus  Ward  says,  and  intended  for  a  passing 
dig  in  the  ribs  of  some  modern  critics,  who  think  that  they  can  lay 
down  laws  in  art  like  the  Pope  in  religion,  e.g.,  the  whole  Rossetti- 
Swinburne  school.  But  if  you  mean  seriously  to  ask  me  what  criti- 
cal books  I  recommend,  I  can  only  say  that  I  recommend  none. 
I  think  that  as  a  critic  the  less  authors  read  of  criticism,  the  better. 
You,  e.g.,  have  a  perfectly  fresh  and  original  view,  and  I  think 
that  the  less  you  bother  yourself  about  critical  canons,  the  less 
chance  there  is  of  your  becoming  self-conscious  and  cramped.  I 
should,  indeed,  advise  the  great  writers  — •  Shakespeare,  Goethe, 
Scott,  etc.,  etc.,  who  give  ideas  and  don't  prescribe  rules.  Sainte- 
Beuve  and  Mat.  Arnold  (in  a  smaller  way)  are  the  only  modern 
critics  who  seem  to  me  worth  reading  —  perhaps,  too,  Lowell. 
We  are  generally  a  poor  lot,  horribly  afraid  of  not  being  in  the 

'  Essays  in  Criticism,  p.  38.  -  The  Renaissance,  p.  xii. 

'  New  Essays  Cowards  a  Critical  Method,  p.  4.     ■•  Criticism  and  Fiction,  p.  39. 

^  Ibid.,  p.  46.  8  F.  W.  Maitland,  Life  0/  Leslie  Stephen,  p.  290. 


INTRODUCTION  XI 

fashion,  and  disposed  to  give  ourselves  airs  on  very  small  grounds." 
Stephen's  father  was  even  more  contemptuous.  Writing  to  John 
Venn  (August  25,  1838),  he  said:^  "Reviewing  is  an  employment 
which  I  have  never  held  in  great  esteem.  It  is  generally  a  self- 
sufficient,  insolent,  superficial,  and  unedifying  style  of  writing,  and 
I  fully  persuaded  myself  that  I  should  never  be  enlisted  among 
the  craft."  The  most  scornful  opinion  is  that  of  one  of  the 
"Rossetti-Swinburne  school,"  William  Morris i^  "To  think  of  a 
beggar  making  a  living  by  selling  his  opinion  about  other  people ! 
And  fancy  any  one  paying  him  for  it !" 

In  short,  criticism  is  one  thing  to  Arnold  and  quite  another 
thing  to  Mr.  Howells  and  Morris,  and  their  views  are  perhaps  no 
more  opposite  than  those  of  Pater  and  Mr.  Robertson.  What  to 
Arnold  is  noble  and  elevating,  at  least  ideally,  is  to  Mr.  Howells, 
in  practice  at  least,  impotent,  and  to  Morris  an  affair  of  commercial 
convenience.  Whereas  Pater  holds  faith  in  the  sensitive  individual 
judgment,  Mr.  Robertson  deems  such  judgments  merely  data  for 
further  analysis.  In  the  face  of  so  great  a  divergence  of  opinion 
as  to  the  function  and  the  potency  of  criticism  it  is  well  to  inquire 
what  such  views  have  in  common  and  how  criticism  may  be 
defined. 

II 

The  most  obvious  answer  to  the  foregoing  query  is  that  each  of 
these  writers  is  expressing  what  is  for  him  a  reality,  or  truth,  or 
fact,  with  regard  to  the  theory  of  criticism  or,  in  its  application, 
to  a  particular  author  or  book.  Furthermore,  for  every  one  of  the 
opinions  quoted  above  there  is  abundant  historical  evidence,  and 
it  remains  true  that  criticism  should  be  "disinterested,"  that  it 
should  be  "in  able  and  honest  hands,"  that  it  should  "endeavour 
to  learn  and  propagate  the  best  that  is  known  and  thought  in  the 
world,"  that  "the  critic  should  possess  ...  a  certain  kind  of 
temperament,  the  power  of  being  deeply  moved  by  the  presence 
of  beautiful  objects,"  that  it  should  "get  behind  spontaneous 
judgment,"  that  it  is  as  a  whole  impotent  in  the  presence  of  genius, 
and  that  many  critics  are  merely  commercial. 

All  this  means  that  criticism  is,  in  the  first  instance,  merely  the 

1  Maitland,  Life  of  Leslie  Stephen,  p.  14. 

2  J.  W.  Mackail,  The  Life  and  Letters  of  William  Morris,  Vol.  I,  p.  134. 


XU  INTRODUCTION 

expression  of  opinion  about  authors,  books,  and  theories  of  art 
generally.  The  opinion  is  usually  expressed  dogmatically;  that 
is,  it  is  expressed  as  if  it  were  a  fact,  a  reality.  It  is  a  reality  in  so 
far  as  it  has  existence  in  the  mind  of  the  critic  who  utters  it;  it 
is  a  fact  of  what  has  been  happily  called  the  "existential"  sort.^ 
In  this  sense,  any  chance  saying  about  an  author  or  a  book  is 
criticism :  it  states  a  fact,  a  reality,  a  truth  present  in  the  mind  of 
the  speaker.  That  opinion  may  be  modified  by  further  reading 
and  by  the  clash  of  opinion  with  opinion,  but  the  resulting  judg- 
ment, if  sincerely  held,  will  be  true,  as  an  "existential"  fact. 
This  primary  conception  of  criticism  as  an  expression  of  personal 
opinion  is  admirably  phrased  by  Professor  Saintsbury  in  his  His- 
tory of  Criticism,  when,  speaking  of  the  object  of  his  work,  he  says, 
"In  the  following  pages  it  is  proposed  to  set  forth  .  .  .  what  Plato, 
Aristotle,  Dionysius,  Longinus,  what  Cicero  and  Quinctilian, 
what  Dante  and  Dryden,  what  Corneille  and  Coleridge,  with  many 
a  lesser  man  besides,  have  said  about  literature."  ^  These  words 
supply  a  handy  definition  of  literary  criticism;  it  is  talk  about  the 
things  of  literature,  haply  with  a  view  to  stating  what  seems  to  the 
critic  to  be  true.  This  definition  is,  of  course,  very  vague;  it  does 
not  distinguish  good  criticism  from  bad  criticism,  except  in  respect 
to  sincerity.  One  must,  therefore,  inquire  further  into  the  matter. 
Before  taking  up  that  task  one  or  two  general  observations  may 
be  made  by  way  of  clearing  the  ground.  The  most  evident  cause 
for  the  discrepancies  noted  in  the  foregoing  paragraphs  lies  in  the 
diversity  of  the  human  temperament.  No  two  men  will  be  struck 
by  precisely  the  same  thing,  by  the  same  body  of  facts,  in  precisely 
the  same  way.  Just  as  no  two  critics  write  about  the  same  set  of 
objects  or  authors,  so  no  two  critics  would  hold  identical  views  with 
regard  to  a  book  that  they  happen  to  be  treating  in  common.  The 
principle  is  a  very  obvious  one,  but  it  is  so  often  lost  sight  of  that  it 
seems  necessary  to  exploit  it  once  more;  for  people  are  prone  to 
cling  to  the  word  of  distinguished  critics  and  catchpenny  reviewers 
as  if  it  contained  final,  universal,  and  unexpugnable  truth.  Such 
things  the  opinion  of  any  critic  does  not  and  never  can  contain; 
indeed  the  moment  a  dictum  becomes  a  dogma,  the  moment  an 
opinion,  though  uttered  with,  is  found  really  to  contain,  finality, 
it  ceases  to  be  interesting;  for  the  history  of  literary  criticism  shows 


'  William  James,  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  4. 
'Vol.  I,  p.  5. 


•  •• 


INTRODUCTION  XUl 

that  method  of  human  expression  to  have  thriven  on  variousness 
of  belief. 

Since,  then,  no  two  men's  interests  or  ideas  of  value  are  just  the 
same,  it  is  a  good  practice  in  studying  critics,  to  see  on  what  ideas 
they  lay  stress.  It  is  always  the  proper  method  of  procedure  in 
observing  people  to  note  what  things  they  love,  hate,  fear,  and 
cherish.  It  will  be  seen  that  the  opinions  heretofore  quoted  have 
body  and  existence  as  reality  of  different  sorts :  some  concern  them- 
selves with  what  is  loosely  called  impression,  as  with  Pater;  others, 
like  those  of  Arnold,  relate  to  moral  value  and  significance;  for 
Mr.  Ho  wells  good  criticism  is,  by  implication,  that  which  lends  the 
helping  hand  to  the  next  generation  of  writers ;  bad,  that  which  is 
practically  impotent. 

Another  very  obvious  reason  for  the  discrepancy  under  discus- 
sion Hes  in  the  pleasing  vagueness  of  some  of  the  major  terms; 
vagueness  is  often  a  source  of  disagreement  as  well  as  of  peace. 
What,  for  example,  are  "beautiful  objects"?  What  is  "the  best 
that  is  known  and  thought  in  the  world"?  What,  so  to  speak, 
are  the  finger-marks  of  the  "able  and  honest  hand"?  What  is 
the  "spontaneous  judgment"  and  by  what  subtle  by-path  may 
one  "get  behind  it"?  Over  such  questions  much  discussion 
naturally  arises.  Mr.  Chesterton  ^  would  undoubtedly  say  that 
they  are  part  and  parcel  of  the  common  sense,  and  are  therefore 
understood  by  everybody,  without  thinking.  They  are  hke  our 
own  names,  which  seem  the  most  familiar  and  appropriate  things 
in  the  world — until  we  begin  repeating  them  and  revolving  them 
in  our  minds,  when  they  lose  all  semblance  of  rime  and  reason. 
The  moment  one  begins  to  ponder  these  terms  they  become  vague. 
It  is  the  task  of  each  critic  to  illustrate  his  conception  of  these 
terms  by  his  essays:  but  the  fact  remains  that  no  two  critics 
would  agree  in  their  illustrations  of  the  general  idea  or  in  their 
special  examples  of  beauty  and  the  best. 

For  these  and  other  reasons  too  numerous  to  mention  a  deal  of 
disagreement  and  conflict  is  the  by-product  of  literary  opinion. 
We  are  all,  let  us  repeat,  literary  critics  whenever  we  express  an 
opinion  about  general  or  specific  literary  things.  Some  of  us  are 
ready  and  proud  to  abide  by  our  opinion  in  the  face  of  the  whole 
world,  nay,  even  more,  are  eager  to  air  our  differences;  others  are 
keen  to  cover  ourselves  with  the  cloak  of  authority  and  to  take 

^  As  in  Heretics. 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

refuge  in  an  ex  cathedra  personality.  A  study  of  the  origins  of 
criticism  would  be  very  interesting,  but  this  is  not  the  place  for 
so  pregnant  a  piece  of  illustration.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  there  has 
in  all  probability  been  in  criticism,  as  in  all  human  afifairs,  a  con- 
flict between_liberty  and  authority.^  The  timid  must  always 
have~sought  refuge  in  the  dicta  of  some  more  expressive  and 
powerful  personality;  others,  more  independent,  have  been  the 
iconoclasts  and  heretics  of  literary  opinion,  have  claimed  the  right 
to  say  plainly  what  they  felt.  In  the  nature  of  things,  a  body 
of  opinion  about  literary  matters  would  arise,  this  tradition  would 
be  perpetuated  by  men  who  found  in  that  a  profitable  way  to  gain 
their  livelihood  or  who  had  real  zeal  for  the  cause,  and  in  time  the 
class  of  professional  critic  would  emerge  from  chaos  —  of  the  tribe 
held  in  disesteem  by  the  author  of  The  Earthly  Paradise. 

Aside  from  this  tradition,  best  expressed  in  such  a  phrase  as  the 
history  of  taste,  there  have  been  many  attempts,  from  before  the 
days  of  Aristotle  down,  to  rationalize  the  whole  matter,  to  show 
what  laws,  what  principles,  what  common  human  motive,  underhe 
our  critical  ideas  and  are  the  sanction  for  authority.  Not  only 
have  rules  been  given  "for  not  writing  and  judging  ill,"  but  the 
problem  of  the  fundamental  law  which  shall  enable  us  to  know  the 
truth  has  been,  somewhat  unsuccessfully,  the  object  of  search  to 
many  philosophical  critics.^  Abandoning  as  futile  for  our  present 
purposes,  though  interesting,  any  effort  to  theorize  along  that  line, 
let  us  turn  to  criticism  as  a  body  of  specific  actual  fact,  and  illus- 
trating the  matter  by  a  pretty  wide  variety  of  specimens  from 
well-known  English  criticism  of  high  quality,  let  us  see  what,  in 
general,  criticism  means,  what  are  the  sanctions  of  critical  opinion, 
what  objective  reality  means  in  criticism,  and  what  are  some  of 
the  categories  actually  employed  in  this  pleasing  science. 

Ill 

Criticism  is  both  a  matter  of  process  and  a  matter  of  form.  As 
to  the  first  of  these,  if  the  foregoing  analysis  be  sound,  criticism 
may  be  said,  broadly,  t_o  aim  at  establishing  fact:  it  is  a  method 
of  demonstration.     Viewed  in  this  light,  criticism  may  be  applied 

*  For  an  able  statement  of  the  essence  and  merits  of  this  conflict,  see  W.  P. 
Trent,   The  A  tUhority  of  Criticism. 

^  See,  for  example,  C.  T.  Winchester,  Some  Principles  of  Literary  Criticism, 
and  W.  J.  Courthorpe,  Lije  in  Poetry,  Law  in  Taste. 


INTRODUCTION  XV 

to  any  branch  of  human  thougtiLQr-actmtjL;  any  idea  or  process 
may  be  "subject  tcT  it ;  one  may  criticise  the  latest  iindings  of 
astronomy  or  the  making  of  armor-plate  and  automobiles,  may 
criticise  oatmeal  as  a  food  or  Ossian  as  an  oasis  in  an  alleged  age 
of  prose.  The  object  of  the  process  is  to  approximate  some  reality 
underlying  these  institutions.  Truth,  that  is  what  criticism  is 
seeking.  Criticism,  then,  like  truth,  may  be  classified  according 
to  the  material  with  whichTTTcleals.  Literary  criticism  is^ne~of 
these  classes  ;  it  enjoys  the  distinction  of  being  at  once  the  most 
conspicuous  entity  among  the  various  branches  of  criticism  and 
the  most  inaccurate  and  indefinite  in  the  application  of  its  tests. 
Literary  criticism  stumbles  at  the  starting  line  in  its  attempt  to 
define  literature,  and  its  tests  are  evidently  not  so  precise  as  may 
be  applied  in  a  matter  of  natural  or  chemical  science.  For  some 
expounders  of  literature  will  have  it  that  the  ideas  are  the  main 
thing,  others,  that  the  expression  of  personality  is  what  counts, 
still  others,  that  one  must  seize  the  "inner"  meaning  and  the 
spiritual  significance.  In  the  main,  however,  literary  criticism, 
like  other  forms  of  criticism,  seeks  (i)  to  establish  the  facts  of 
literature  and  (2)  to  pass  judgment  on  the  value  and  significance 
of  those  facts.  Since  passing  judgment  on  the  worth  or  value  of 
a  fact  or  body  of  facts  is  really  nothing  but  establishing  another 
fact,  though  in  a  different  category,  the  aim  of  literary  criticism 
may  be  defined  as,  broadly,  that  which  we  stated  at  the  beginning 
of  this  paragraph  —  the  establishing  of  facts,  of  whatever  sort,  so 
they  be  facts  —  that  is,  truths,  realities  —  about  literature.  Like 
any  intellectual  process,  literary  criticism  may  therefore  be  defined 
by  (i)  the  material  with  which  it  deals  and  (2)  the  methods  which 
it  used  to  establish  its  conclusions,  the  cogency  of  which  varies 
greatly  with  the  material. 

Under  the  head  of  material,  a  large  number  of  classes  may  be 
recognized  and  commonly  are  recognized.  TextuaLcrilicisilU 
for  example,  aims  to  establish  the  correctness  of  the  text  of  an 
author;  it  employs,  very  usefully,  much  human  energy.  Bio- 
graphical criticismjtries  to  establish  the  facts  of  the  life  of  an 
author  and  to  show  how  they  are  related  to  his  writing;  Stephen's 
account  of  Swift's  work  in  behalf  of  Ireland  in  this  volume  is  an 
illustration  of  this  sort  of  essay,  and  it  shows  the  relation  of  criti- 
cism to  biography.  Akin  to  this  are  facts  of  personality,  of 
temperament  and  the  like.  Facts  of  vogue  are  a  source  of  material 
not  to  be  neglected ;  indeed,  these  facts,  like  those  of  the  life  of  the 


XVI  INTRODUCTION 

author,  may  almost  be  said  to  be  the  starting  point  for  any  good 
criticism  whatsoever.  Facts  of  vogue^jjf  contemporary  opinion, 
of  what  people  have  said,  are,  of  course,  the  basis  of  all  good 
historical  cnticisnT  In  passing,  however,  it  may  be  said  thai 
what  has  been  called  the  "collective"  estimate  of  books  and 
authors  receives,  on  the  whole,  too  little  attention  from  critics. 
Critics  usually  prefer  theorizing  and  airing  their  own  views  to 
looking  up  the  facts.  It  is  one  of  Coleridge's  claims  to  distinc- 
tion as  a  critic  that  he  makes  the  vogue  of  Wordsworth  the  starting 
point  for  his  account,  though  he  quickly  becomes  transcendental. 
Mr.  Robertson's  critique  of  Poe  is  largely  an  analysis  of  the  col- 
lective estimate  of  Poe,  with  comments  of  his  own.  It  is  one  of 
the  best  specimens  of  that  type  that  we  have.  An  even  more 
matter  of  fact  example  is  in  Mr.  Sidney  Lee's  Lije  0}  William 
Shakespeare,  a  chapter  (20)  entitled  Shakespeare's  Posthumous 
Reputation.  Questions  of  influence,  when  treated  as  matters  of 
fact,  and  other  such  topics  come  under  this  head.  But  one  who 
looks  into  the  matter  will  be  amazed  to  see  how  little  critical 
writing,  comparatively,  there  is  of  this  sort.  Careful  literary  histo- 
rians are  usually  much  more  concerned  with  their  own  views 
and  those  of  their  fellow-critics  than  with  strictly  contemporary 
opinion.  Even  modern  critics,  dealing  with  modern  authors,  go 
into  the  rationale,  the  aesthetics,  the  personality,  or  what  not,  to 
the  exclusion  of  this  important  source  of  material.*  This  is  a 
field  in  which  an  enormous  amount  of  literary  work  remains  to 
be  done. 

Facts  relating  to  the  class  or  type  of  writer  to  which  an  author 
belongs  are  another  well-recognized  kind  of  material.  Johnson's 
exposition  of  the  metaphysical  poets  is  an  example  of  this  interest. 
Many  of  the  great  classes  or  types  have  become  more  or  less  set, 
and  we  have  the  commonly  accepted  categories  of  epic,  dramatic, 

'  See,  for  example,  Mr.  A.  C.  Benson's  Life  of  Pater  in  the  English  Men  of 
Letters  series.  Mr.  Benson  devotes  much  time  to  summarizing  Pater's  works 
(a  totally  unnecessary  thing  for  one  who  has  read  them  and  not  very  inspiriting 
for  one  who  has  not)  and  much  time  to  comment  on  Pater's  style,  personality,  etc. 
Perhaps  Mr.  Benson  did  not  mean  to  give  us  more,  and  his  attitude  is  surely 
worshipful  and  decorous,  but  one  would  welcome  a  word  about  Pater's  actual 
influence.  In  contrast  are  to  be  named  Professor  Lounsbury's  studies  in  the  vogue 
of  Shakespeare  {Shakesperian  Wars).  A  conscientious  endeavour  to  state  a 
method  which  shall  account  for  all  possible  sources  and  hence  be  a  "collective" 
criticism  is  to  be  found  in  E.  Henncquin's  La  Critique  .Scicntifique.  This  is  sum- 
marized by  Mr.  Robertson  in  New  Essays  towards  a  Critical  Method  {The  Theory 
and  Practice  of  Criticism). 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

elegiac,  lyric  poetry,  etc.,  and,  in  prose,  such  things  as  the  essay 
and  the  novel.  It  is  the  aim  of  much  modern  criticism  to  study 
these  types,  and  criticism  characteristically  goes  beyond  mere  study 
of  the  form  and  tries  to  ascertain  the  further  fact  of  the  comparative 
value  of  each  class,  with  a  view  to  confining  judicial  comment  to 
intra-,  rather  than  inter-,  class  comparisons.  Why  attempt  to 
compare  a  lyric  and  a  novel  ?  They  are  in  different  media  and  are 
not  susceptible  of  real  comparison  except  as  representatives  of 
alleged  higher  and  lower  classes.  Facts  of  treatment,  of  method 
of  art,  of  form,  occupy  a  very  conspicuous  place  in  the  history  of 
criticism  Modern  rhetorical  study,  for  example,  is  merely  a  prac- 
tical application  of  some  of  the  critical  results  obtained  in  the 
study  of  this  medium.  Of  the  essays  in  this  volume  those  of  Poe, 
Mr.  Harrison,  and  Air.  Robertson  will  be  found  to  contain  material 
of  this  sort. 

An  exceedingly  prolific  source  of  actual  critical  commentary  lies 
in  the  interpretation  of  an  author's  meaning.  The  love  of  literary 
interpretation  seems  to  be  deep  seated  in  the  human  heart;  the 
hidden  meaning,  the  underlying  mystery,  is  always  a  charming 
thing  to  conjure  with,  and  it  offers  possibilities  of  interest  and  fur- 
ther mystification  that  no  accurate  scientific  study  can  ever  hope  to 
equal.  "Whole  rivulets  of  ink,"  as  Swift  would  say,  have  been 
expended  in  the  yet  unsettled  question  of  what  Shakespeare  meant 
Hamlet  to  mean ;  and  an  equally  prolific  study  could  be  made  of 
the  different  interpretations  that  have  been  put  on  Dante's  Divina 
Commedia.  Lowell's  essay  on  Dante,^  for  example,  is  mainly  one 
of  interpretation,  designed  to  convey  to  the  then  somewhat  untu- 
tored American  audience  a  proper  conception  of  Dante's  meaning 
and  to  correct  some  of  the  mistakes  of  interpretation  of  a  preceding 
volume  by  Maria  Francesca  Rossetti.^  A  good  example  of  not  too 
solemn  interpretation  is  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw's  The  Perfect  Wag- 
nerite,  and  it  is  a  good  subject  for  study  in  that  the  author  gives 
evidence  of  an  apparently  dcfisiite  sort  for  his  interpretations. 
In  general,  the  literarv  interpreter,  like  the  critic  who  neglects _the 
collective  view,  does  noLjnudl  trouble  himself  with  a  historical, 
aspect  of  the  subject,  but  reads  his  own  meanings  into  it.  Brown- 
ing,  perhaps,  more  than  any  modern  Engfishman  has  been  the 
prey  of  interpreters,  scientific,  philosophical,  theosophical,  neo- 
platonic,  symbolistic.     The  truth  of  the  matter  is  that  interpreta- 

'  Prose  Works,  Vol.  IV.  2^  Shadow  of  Dante. 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

tion  is  much  more  a  matter  of  creation  than  of  argumentative 
science,  and  hence  it  is  one  of  the  most  winning  forms  that  the 
critical  process  can  follow. 

Al-in    fn   infprpri?±a.tinn    ic;   mnrh    nf  the_Criticism   that   Seeks   JtS 

material  in  moral  values  and  in  significance.  It  is,  of  course, 
about  this^attitude  that  theHefce  discussions  of  art  for  art's  sake 
have  ariseru  To  some  critics  a  writer  like  PoeTs  msignlfirant  and 
meretricious  because  he  did  not  in  the  least  care  to  inculcate  a  moral 
and  "significant"  view  of  the  universe,  but  preferred  to  work  as 
skilfully  from  any  premises  that  he  chose  to  assume  to  a  perfect 
conclusion  from  those  premises.  The  comparative  admiration  that 
the  French  have  for  Poe,  the  scorn  which  those  of  us  who  are  more 
used  to  Emerson  and  Hawthorne  feel  for  him,  is  both  an  illustra- 
tion and  a  proof  of  the  fact  that  such  differences  of  opinion  are  tem- 
peramental and  racial  rather  than  demonstrable  and  rational. 
Arnold,  of  the  writers  in  this  volume,  most  sternly  held  to  the  moral 
view  of  literature ;  Poe  to  the  artistic.  Shelley,  of  course,  is  a  critic 
who  attempts  to  ground  the  morality  of  his  position  in  the  innate 
yearning  of  humanity  for  the  ideal. 

There  are  other  sources  of  material,  but  the  matter  need  be  no 
further  illustrated.  Besides  the  material  and  the  point  of  view 
from  which  it  is  approached,  there  are  naturally  a  great  many 
questions  connected  with  the  personality,  the  predilection,  and  the 
training  of  the  critic.  These  all  modify  the  result,  so  that,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  of  the  categories  of  material  named  above,  not  one 
can  be  found,  actually,  to  exist  in  a  pure  state.  A  critic  pre- 
sumably writes  what  he  feels,  what  he  deems  it  good  for  people  to 
know,  and  does  not  think  of  the  categories.  The  combination  of 
the  elements  just  spoken  of  —  the  material,  the  personality,  the 
Epint  of  view,  the  animus,  the  trainuig,  etc.,  of  the  critic  —  result, 
for  purposes  of  convenience,  in  several  classes  or  types  of  criticism. 
They  should  be  called  tendencies  rather  than  types,  since  the 
line  of  separation  between  any  two  classes  cannot  be  surely  drawn. 
Though  the  classifications  are  not  very  satisfactory,  some  of  the 
main  types  may  be  briefly  indicated. 

The  primary,  the  most  elementary,  and  by  all  means  the  safest, 
is  impressionism.  It  is  elementary  because  it  is  concerned  merely 
with  what  the  critic  happens  to  think  at  the  moment,  and  because 
the  critic's  reaction,  though  often  expressed  with  much  charm, 
is  never  other  than  a  variably  personal  one.  It  is  safe,  for  a  critic 
may  always  take  refuge  in  the  phrase  which  there  is  no  gainsaying, 


INTRODUCTION  XIX 

"So  it  seems  to  me,"  and  may,  if  he  be  impolite  and  a  Capulet, 
bite  his  thumb  at  other  critics.  It  is  not  wholly  a  matter  of  regret 
that  from  the  writings  of  an  impressionistic  critic  it  usually  is 
impossible  to  make  out  a  consistent  theory  of  the  universe  or  of 
criticism.  A  case  in  point  is  the  brilliant  contemporary  English 
critic,  Mr.  Chesterton,  who  seems  occasionally  to  contradict  his 
premises  in  his  conclusions  or  in  succeeding  premises.  To  differ,  / 
eternally  to  differ,  from  previous  opinion,  to  have  intuitions  and  to  ' 
express  them  with  a  vigorous  air  of  finality,  is  the  one  principle 
that  lends  coherence  and  form  to  his  stimulating  and  often  admir- 
able suggestions.  Probably  M.  Jules  Lemaitre,  the  distinguished 
French  critic,  is  the  classic  exponent  of  this  type  of  criticism.  In 
this  volume  Lamb  is  perhaps  the  best  example. 

The  type  has  many  opposites.  The  one  nearest  to  it  is  probably 
the  so-called  "interpretative"  or  "appreciative"  frame  of  mind. 
As  these  names  imply,  criticism  of  this  sort  strives  to  throw  light 
on  the  real  meaning  or  character  of  the  author  or  to  weigh  and 
measure  him  at  his  just  value.  Like  any  criticism,  it  may  deal  with 
different  kinds  of  material  —  personality,  work,  style,  etc.  —  but 
its  essence  is  an  attempt  justly  to  appreciate  the  subject,  to  weigh  it 
at  its  proper  worth.  It  is  the  opposite  of  the  impressionistic  type 
in  that  it  aims  to  take  into  consideration  the  author  and  his  work 
from  his  point  of  view  and  not  merely  from  that  of  the  personal 
reaction  of  the  critic.  Pater  is  perhaps  the  most  systematic  ex- 
ponent of  the  appreciative  tendency  in  English  literature,  but  such 
critics  as  Bagehot,  Arnold,  and  Coleridge  often  deal  with  appre- 
ciative categories. 

An  opposite  of  both  of  these  is  the  so-called  judicial  type,  now 
happily,  in  its  extreme  forms,  tending  to  pass  out  of  existence. 
Characteristically  it  consists  in  setting  up  or  strongly  implying  a 
standard — philosophical,  political,  religious,  commercial,  socio- 
logical, or  what  not  —  and  rating  literature  by  it.  Alleged  "canons 
of  criticism"  derived  from  the  practice  of  "Tully,  Lord  Kames, 
and  other  elegant  writers,"  are  examples  of  a  fashion  that  has  been 
persistent  since  the  days  of  Aristotle.  AH  criticism,  in  some  way, . 
imphes  a  standard,  but  in  criticism  of  the  judicial  tvpe.  the  stand^_ 

ard  is  found,  not  in  the  critic's  likes  and  dislikes,  as  with  im^ 

pressionism,  nor  in  the  author's  own  purpose,  as  jn  appreciation^ 

but  nTsomelhing  external  to  both.  The  best  example  of  judicial 
criticism  that  we  have,  alike  ot  its  manner  and  of  its  final  im- 
potence, is  to  be  found  in  the  work  of  Francis  Jeffrey,  whose  stand- 


XX  INTRODUCTION 

ards,  derived  from  the  canons  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  the 
Whiggism  of  the  time,  proved  inadequate  to  cope  with  the  outburst 
of  imaginative  hterature  at  the  opening  of  the  nineteenth  century.^ 
It  is  critics  of  this  type  whom  Mr.  Howells  has  in  mind,  and  their 
name  is  legion.  Every  critic  in  this  volume  is  to  some  degree  an 
example  of  it.  Most  conspicuous  is  Arnold,  whose  standard  is 
a  literary-moral  one.  The  aesthetic  critic  who,  like  Hazlitt  or  Mr. 
Harrison,  showers  adjectives  of  characterization  upon  us,  may  be- 
long to  this  class.  Or  he  may  be  an  impressionist  or  an  appre 
ciator. 

There  is  also  a  type  known  as  the  scientific,  the  opposite  of 
all  those  that  have  preceded,  but  most  strikingly  opposed  to  im- 
pressionism. This  operates  by  collecting,  comparing,  and  weigh- 
ing of  all  possible  data,  with  a  view  to  arriving  at  a  stricter  and 
less  personal  and  prejudiced  view  of  the  subject  than  the  other 
methods  furnish.  The  tests  are  argumentative,  but  there  can  never 
be  hope  of  reaching  so  accurate  results  as  are  obtained  in  more 
strictly  scientific  work.  Good  inductive  criticism  of  literature  is 
scarce.  The  data  are  too  complicated,  the  personal  equation  too 
much  in  the  way,  to  make  possible  any  fixed  result.  Mr.  Robert- 
son's valuable  work  is  a  good  instance  of  this  type,  and  the  essay 
on  Poe  is,  in  his  own  opinion,  the  best  example  of  his  method. 
To  a  certain  degree,  of  course,  writers  like  Bagehot  are  "scientific" 
in  that  they  expound  facts  which  in  a  large  measure  are  not  open 
to  question. 

A  distinction  frequently  drawn  is  that  between  destructive  and 
constructive  criticism.  Destructive  criticism  is,  as  its  name  im- 
plies, that  which  aims  to  overthrow  what  has  been  regarded  as 
established  and  accepted,  a  theory,  a  set  of  ideas,  a  fair  reputation, 
without  any  palpable  substitution.  Macaulay's  essay  on  Mont- 
gomery does  this  and  does  it  very  effectively,  much  more  so  than 
the  destructive  criticism  of  Jeffrey,  whose  work,  as  a  matter  of 
historical  fact,  in  the  long  run  failed  of  its  purpose.  What  gives 
destructive  criticism  its  effect  is  an  interesting  jjroblem  for  study; 
it  will  probably  be  found  to  reside,  like  most  of  the  sanctions  for 
critical  opinion,  in  the  consensus  of  opinion  —  of  which  more  later 
on.  Destructive  criticism  will  be  found  usually  on  the  side  of 
conservatism,  and,  like  satire,  it  gains  its  force  from  being  sub- 
stantially in  accord  with  some  sort  of  prevailing  sentiment.     Much 

'  See  L.  E.  Gates,  Selections  from  the  Essays  of  Francis  Jeffrey,  Introduction. 


INTRODUCTION  XXI 

destructive  criticism  is,  of  course,  of  an  iconoclastic  kind;  a 
good  example  of  vigorous  attacks  on  reputations  of  great  currency 
will  be  found  in  Mr.  Robertson's  Modern  Humanists.  As  to  con- 
structive criticism,  it  aims  to  establish  new  ideas  and  principles, 
to  ascertain  what  may  underlie  the  obvious  and  the  ordinary 
that  is  really  of  more  importance,  and  it  aims  to  infer  the  unknown 
from  the  known.  To  its  inductions  and  generalizations  we  owe 
whatever  literary  principles  we  have. 

As  has  been  said  these  types  are  merely  tendencies,  and  others 
may  be  recognized.  Viewed  with  regard  to  any  group  of  con- 
temporary authors  they  do  not  seem,  unless  the  critics  are  openly 
hostile  to  each  other,  to  amount  to  much.  It  is  when  one  over- 
looks the  whole  field  of  criticism  that  they  assume  larger  propor- 
tions and  stand  for  different  fashions  and  different  vogues. 


IV 

As  a  matter  of  form,  criticism  may  be  defined  as  a  body  of  more 
or  less  substantial  and  complete  theses.  If  actual  critical  books 
and  essays  are  looked  at,  criticism  will  appear  to  be  no  more  than 
a  great  many  separate  essays  and  books  each  of  which  presents  a 
pretty  complete  or  a  pretty  scattering  set  of  ideas,  of  which  the 
latter  type  is  the  more  moribund.  The  truth  of  this  characteriza- 
tion will  be  borne  out  by  an  cursory  glance  at  the  contents  of  this 
volume.  Here  are  fifteen  essays,  varying  in  length  from  five  thou- 
sand to  twenty-five  thousand  words.  Nearly  every  one  is  a  wxll- 
known  example  of  literary  criticism,  but  practically  all  that  can  be 
said,  truthfully,  of  them  in  common  is  that  each  presents  the  sincere 
views  of  the  author,  that  each  presents  a  pretty  complete  thesis,  or 
central  idea,  and  that  each  has  been  more  or  less  widely  read  and 
accepted.  Yet  each,  as  the  footnotes  witness,  is  capable  of  exten- 
sion and  elaboration.  Were  they  articles,  treatises,  and  books 
instead  of  being  essays,  or  were  they  short  reviews  and  notes  they 
would  still  be  amenable  to  this  description,  to  wit,  —  that  a  critical 
article,  essay,  or  book,  is  a  piece  of  writing  that  aims  to -present  a 
body  of  fact  or  theory  about  some  author  or  book,  — ■  about  litera- 
ture, in  short,  —  to  a  reader  or  an  audience.  Criticism,  then,  may 
be  judged  on  purely  rhetorical  grounds.  Aside  from  the  value  or 
the  currency  of  its  ideas,  it  is  good  criticism  in  so  far  as  it  presents 
a  clear  thesis  or  a  coherent  body  of  facts.     Like  any  other  piece 


xxii  INTRODUCTION 

of  writing  it  is  amenable  to  sound  rhetorical  principles.  Its  clear- 
ness is  of  prime  importance. 

Any  occasion  may  serve  for  the  display  of  criticism  and  any 
motive  may  serve  for  its  expression.  Desire  to  explain  the  vogue 
of  an  author  ;  a  zeal,  as  in  Ruskin's  Modern  Painters,  to  see  justice 
done  ;  a  personal  interest  and  a  wish  to  share  a  pleasure  ;  a  desire, 
as  with  Arnold,  to  keep  people  from  dying  in  their  literary  sins ; 
the  need  of  money  —  all  these  are  adequate  motives  for  the  pro- 
duction of  critical  work.  Hence  criticism  may  also  take  any  form 
it  pleases.  Here,  again,  we  recognize  conventional  types.  The 
most  frequent  and  most  perishable  is  the  book  notice,  a  little  shorter 
lived  than  the  formal  book-review  ;  there  is  the  introductory  essay, 
preface,  or  prologue  ;  there  is  the  independent  essay,  the  lecture 
or  address,  the  critical  biography,  the  literary  history.  These  are 
matters  of  more  or  less  formal  occasion.  They  are  not  essentially 
different  from  any  forms  of  discourse  or  public  address,  and  good- 
ness and  badness,  from  this  point  of  view,  has  been  abundantly 
treated  in  books  on  formal  rhetoric  or  the  art  of  discourse.^ 

From  the  rhetorical  point  of  view,  criticism  is  sometimes  spoken 
of  as  if  it  were  a  separate  form  or  method  of  discourse,  distinct, 
that  is,  from  description,  narration,  exposition,  and  argumenta- 
tion. Specific  critical  essays,  however,  are,  like  almost  any  actual 
writing,  combinations  of  these  forms.  Criticism  certainly  employs 
description  and  narration,  chiefly  by  way  of  illustration,  and  it  is, 
as  has  been  shown  in  the  present  section,  in  form,  a  matter  of 
good  exposition ;  in  substance  it  is  often  largely  argumentative. 


The  relation  of  criticism  to  argumentation  naturally  leads  to  the 
important  question  of  the  proof  of  which  critical  opinion  is  sus- 
ceptible. Clearly  this  is  a  very  vital  question,  and  no  one  should 
shirk  it;  for  the  reason  that  people  are  prone  to  accept  the  word  of 
critics  as  final,  as  fact,  whereas  the  word  of  critics  is,  in  the  first 
instance,  fact  only  in  the  sense  that  it  exists  in  the  mind  of  the 
critics.  What,  so  to  speak,  is  the  objective  proof  for  such  opin- 
ions, what  is  the  demonstration,  what  the  sanctions  for  any 
critical  opinion  whatsoever?  How  can  critical  opinion  about 
books  be  verified,  be  accepted  as  of  wider  than  merely  personal 
intuition  and  truth? 

'As,  for  example,  R.  C.  Ringwalt's  Modern  American  Oratory. 


INTRODUCTION  XXlil 

These  questions  are  capable  of  no  one  answer.  It  would  be 
a  far  easier  matter  for  Leslie  Stephen  to  prove  the  truth  of  his 
conclusions  'about  Swift's  work  for  Ireland,  than  for  Matthew 
Arnold  to  demonstrate  the  ultimate  value  of  his  touchstones,  or 
for  Shelley  to  substantiate  the  conception  underlying  his  famous 
essay.  Church  records,  histories  of  Ireland,  some  well-deduced 
conclusions  from  well-known  facts  would  furnish  Stephen  with  the 
proof  that  he  needed.  No  such  facts  exist  for  the  establishment 
of  the  presumption  that  a  few  selected  lines  of  poetry  may  serve  as 
a  gauge  for  all  literary  production  whatsoever,  and  most  people, 
even  if  they  grant  the  truth  of  Arnold's  thesis,  are  put  to  it  when 
they  try  to  make  a  practical  application  thereof ;  one  can  find  the 
"great  note"  in  many  things,  if  one  has  an  ear  for  great  notes  or 
is  willing  to  put  up  with  a  little  self-deception.  The  proof  for 
Shelley's  position  is  as  general  as  that  which  divides  into  opposing 
camps  the  philosophers  of  the  origin  of  ideas  and  the  reasons  why 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  conscience.  The  demonstration  of  much 
of  an  essay  like  Bagehot's  is  a  series  of  axiomatic  (and  brilliantly 
phrased)  divisions;  if  you  have  a  large  number  of  the  hoops  and 
have  arranged  them  well,  and  can  shoot  tolerably  straight  through 
them,  you  are  sure,  if  you  can  draw  Bagehot's  bow  of  Odysseus, 
to  make  some  palpable  hit.  Johnson  arrives  at  his  conclusions 
about  the  metaphysical  poets  largely  by  process  of  illustration.  In 
a  sense  one  may  prove  anything  by  illustration;  it  is  very  easy 
to  find  some  sort  of  illustration  for  any  thesis  that  one  may  wish; 
Shakespeare  has  been  written  down  an  ass  by  analysis  and  illus- 
tration; and  the  charge  brought  against  the  fairness  and  the 
finality  of  Johnson  is  that  he  failed  to  give  examples  of  the  really 
admirable  side  of  the  poets  whom  he  happens  almost  immortally 
to  have  characterized. 

Speaking,  in  general,  there  are  two  chief  classes  of  proof  for 
critical  opinion  in  literary  matters.  These  classes  may  be  shown 
by  an  analysis  of  actual  critical  essays  and  books.  The  first  and 
by  far  the  most  common  sanction  for  critical  opinion  lies  in  per- 
sonality, broadly  regarded.  The  ability  to  express  one's  opinion 
tends  to  create  believers  in  that  opinion,  and,  though  opposition 
may  also  be  aroused,  it  is  in  this  way  that  cults  are  formed  and 
opinion  becomes  crystallized.  Such  opinions  will  be  more  or  less 
widely  held  in  proportion  as  they  are  useful  and  valuable  to  the 
people  whom  they  chance  to  affect;  what  seems  to  be  good  will 
hold,  what  is  not  useful  will  perish  or  be  regarded  as  a  curious  and 


xxiv  INTRODUCTION 

casual  expression  of  by-gone  taste.  Agreement  of  opinion  on  a 
small  scale  constitutes  a  cult  or  school ;  on  a  large  scale,  held  rather 
subconsciously,  agreement  goes  to  make  taste,  the  most  potent, 
though  not  a  fixed,  arbiter  in  matters  literary.  Personal  opinion, 
then,  expanded  and  diffused  till  it  becomes  an  affair  of  wide-spread 
conviction,  of  pleasing  certitude,  finally  of  common-sense,  is  really 
the  main  sanction  and  source  of  support  for  all  critical  opinion 
whatsoever. 

That  this  is  so  may  be  shown  by  two  examples,  which,  though 
open  to  the  charge  of  being  illustrations,  are  nevertheless  reason- 
ably true.  That  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Wordsworth,  and  others 
are  "classics"  can  be  demonstrated  only  by  this  method  of  uni- 
versal consent,  by  this  broad  argument  from  personality.  We  do 
not  necessarily  read  these  classics,  but  we  hold  them  dear,  because 
there  are  in  them  elements  of  permanent  value  (as  it  seems)  for 
mankind.  It  would,  perhaps,  be  more  strictly  truthful  to  say  that 
the  word  "classic"  is  a  term  of  endearment  that  we  have  agreed 
to  apply  to  books  of  a  certain  type,  fulfilling  certain  requirements 
that  we  have  agreed  to  like.  However  that  may  be,  the  point 
is  that  the  place  of  such  books  exists  in,  receives  its  sanction  through, 
is  demonstrable  by,  popular  favour,  through  a  large  number  of 
years,  over  a  wide  extent  of  country.  Like  the  American  Con- 
stitution or  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  a  literary  opinion  is 
a  human  institution,  and  will  be  held  so  long  as  it  is  useful  and  no 
longer.  The  demonstration  of  its  truth  lies  in  its  utility,  just  as 
tastes  change  and  literary  taste  is  modified,  when  they  cease  to 
be  agreeable,  pleasing,  and  satisfying. 

Lest  this  should  seem  too  pragmatic  a  view  of  criticism  to  hold, 
the  other  illustration  may  be  cited.  Just  as  a  plain  matter  of  fact 
most  criticism,  as  actually  written,  never  trespasses  on  funda- 
mental ground.  Nine-tenths  of  the  actual  criticism  is  in  perfect 
accord  with  the  popular  and  traditional  taste,  with  popular  and 
traditional  morality  and  ethics.  Certain  critics,  to  be  sure,  thrive 
and  batten  on  dissent  and  paradox:  but  for  the  most  part  it  is  the 
role  of  the  critic  to  receive  as  correct  the  current  "collective" 
opinion  —  which  he  is  doing  something  to  help  form  and  crystallize. 
His  task  is  then  to  find  reasons  for  its  correctness.  These  reasons 
naturally  differ  according  to  the  temperament  and  taste  of  the 
critic,  as  in  the  variety  of  reasons  found  by  the  distinguished  Eng- 
lish critics  of  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  for  the 
assumption  that  Shakespeare  is  of  unparalleled  genius.     Indeed, 


INTRODUCTION  XXV 

the  critics  who  make  us  see  things  in  a  different  hght  are  com- 
paratively few  and  far  between.  Dryden,  Johnson,  Coleridge, 
Arnold,  Pater,  to  name  a  few  mentioned  in  this  volume,  have  given 
new  facts  and  have  more  or  less  widely  inculcated  new  ways  of 
looking  at  things. 

The  other  method  of  demonstration  is  of  a  more  scientific  sort. 
What  scientific  checks,  what  argumentative  methods  of  the  con- 
vincing, rather  than  the  persuasive,  sort  can  be  applied  to  critical 
opinion?  Clearly  the  facts  of  any  established  branch  of  know- 
ledge might  be  applied  to  opinions.  Thus,  modern  philology 
undoubtedly  teaches  us  that  Dryden's  view  of  Chaucer's  verse  is 
wrong,  and  a  flitting  acquaintance  with  the  life  of  Shakespeare, 
the  history  of  the  stage,  or  the  most  common  motive  for  human 
endeavour,  would  dispose  of  the  Lamb's  paradox  that  Shake- 
speare's plays  are  unfit  for  stage  representation.  The  facts  of 
philology,  of  literary  history,  and  even  the  course  of  traditional 
authority  are  checks  to  opinion.  This  matter,  of  course,  requires 
a  very  full  exposition  for  satisfactory  treatment. 

Tests  such  as  are  to  be  used  in  a  legal  proceeding  may  be  em^- 
ployed  with  some  result.  A  critic,  who  is  capable  of  contradicting 
himself,  is,  despite  Emerson's  famous  dictum,  not  to  be  taken  as  a 
guide  to  ultimate  truth.  It  is,  naturally,  reasonable  to  avoid  any 
such  guide  to  the  kingdom  of  right  in  literary  matters.  A  prevail- 
ing love  of  paradox,  a  scorn  of  common  opinion,  a  contempt  for 
authority,  are  often  entertaining  in  a  critic  —  where  they  do  not 
do  much  real  harm  —  but  they  do  not  contribute  to  one's  certitude 
and  peace  of  mind,  if  one  is  in  quest  of  verity.  Inaccuracy  with 
regard  to  facts  may,  under  some  circumstances,  tend  to  make  a 
reader  hesitate  about  accepting  an  opinion  as  really  very  authori- 
tative, and  yet  some  of  our  most  charming  literary  critics  are  not 
always  exact.  Vagueness  as  to  the  main  thesis  may  possibly 
cause  one  to  doubt  the  minor  dicta.  It  is,  for  example,  a  substan- 
tial charge  to  be  made  against  much  of  Arnold's  social  criticism, 
and  to  some  degree  against  his  literary  criticism,  that  after  caution- 
ing us  against  our  besetting  sins,  he  tells  that  we  must  have 
something  "real."  Now,  "the  real  thing"  is  something  that  the 
shortcomings  are  not,  but  we  never  get  any  nearer  to  it  than  that ; 
positively,  it  remains  undefined,  and  causes  beginners  in  Arnold  to 
scratch  their  heads  and  chew  their  pencils,  forgetting  that  Arnold 
is  a  very  valuable  critic  by  reason  of  bringing  in  new  material  and 
new  points  of  view  to  the  attention  of  his  fellow-islarders.    "Per- 


XXvi  INTRODUCTION 

sonal  characteristics  that  are  likely  to  interfere  with  the  success  " 
—  as  an  intelligence  office  or  a  teacher's  agency  would  say  — of 
the  critic,  as  rancour,  malice,  a  desire  for  revenge,  a  prevailing 
flippancy,  a  slovenly  style  of  address,  are  in  the  way  of  the  per- 
manent acceptability  of  critical  opinion.  The  basis  of  Mr.  Rob- 
ertson's well-taken  attack  on  Griswold's  criticism  of  Poe  is  that 
Griswold  stultified  himself  by  harbouring  motives  of  revenge 
against  his  dead  author.  Such  a  view  is  coming  to  be  the  common 
verdict  with  regard  to  all  the  Griswoldian  criticism.  The  common 
view,  the  commonly  accepted  opinion  —  that  is  the  ultimate  court 
of  appeal  in  criticism  —  that  is,  like  usage  in  language,  what  gives 
even  the  critic  his  final  place.  Argumentative  and  other  tests  are 
but  methods  of  hastening  or  retarding  the  process.  All  induction, 
so  called,  in  literary  criticism  must  ultimately  be  based  on  data 
supplied  by  diverse  and  fallible    minds. 

In  sum,  if  the  preceding  analyses  are  correct,  literary  criticism 
is  opinion  about  books,  authors,  and  literary  art,  with  a  view,  so 
far  as  possible,  to  establishing  acceptable  fact.  Actually,  it  consists 
of  a  corpus  of  opinion,  theory,  and  fact,  in  the  form  of  reviews, 
essays,  addresses,  treatises,  casual  sayings,  and  dicta  generally. 
It  may  deal  with  personality,  with  ideas,  with  style, —  in  short,  with 
any  aspect  of  literature  that  it  please,  and  still  be  criticism.  It  will 
be  good  criticism  in  so  far  as  it  utters  ideas  that  it  is  good  for 
mankind  to  know,  or  that  contain  in  themselves  substantial  demon- 
stration of  their  truth.  It  will  also  be  good  in  proportion  as  it  is 
orderly,  clear,  and  definite  in  exposition.  It  would  follow  that 
the  essentials  of  good  criticism  are,  as  personal  qualities,  sincerity, 
fairness,  and  candour;  as  intellectual  characteristics,  knowledge  of 
the  facts,  and  an  ability  to  use  the  ordinary  rules  of  logic  and 
common  sense;   as  expression,  clear  and  orderly  statement. 

VI 

Let  us  pursue  the  matter  into  the  region  of  practice.  Criticism 
is  a  very  interesting  field  for  both  amusing  and  disciplinary 
study,  and  the  writing  of  critiques  is  pleasing  diversion  as  well 
as  an  occasionally  irksome  part  of  the  rhetorical  curriculum  in 
colleges. 

The  analysis  of  criticism  and  critical  essays  may  be  briefly  ex- 
plained. The  most  important  element  is  surely  the  material  that 
the  critic  has  to  expound  and  the  ideas  that  he  sets  forth;    his 


INTRODUCTION  XXVll 

substance,  in  short,  is,  as  in  any  prose  work,  the  first  thing  to  be 
taken  into  consideration  by  the  student.  The  point  of  view  of  the 
writer,  that  is  to  say,  the  kind  of  proof  that  he  uses  in  support 
of  his  conclusions,  is  another  important  element.  In  short, 
the  essential  process  is  (i)  to  note  the  critic's  conclusions,  and 
(2)  then  see  the  steps  by  which  he  reached  them.  After  these  may 
properly  come  (3)  a  study  of  the  occasion  as  effecting  the  treatment, 
and  (4)'  an  analysis  of  the  structure  and  style.  The  actual  fact, 
the  soundness  of  the  opinion,  the  quality  and  kind  of  proof,  the 
standards  explicit  and  implicit  —  these  are  the  important  things. 
For  convenience  in  this  analysis,  a  student  should  have  in  mind 
the  extreme  types  of  criticism :  impressionism,  where  an  author 
gives  simply  and  solely  his  own  feeling  or  opinion  without  regard 
to  external  and  objective  fact,  and  a  matter-of-fact  statement  of  the 
collective  fact.  No  writer  in  this  volume  quite  reaches  either 
extreme.  Lamb  is  nearest  to  impressionism;  Mr.  Robertson  to 
collectivism. 

The  selections  in  this  book  will  furnish  abundant  material  for 
analysis.  They  represent  considerable  variety  of  taste  and  opinion 
and  they  are  arranged  in  order  from  the  simplest  and  most  easily 
demonstrable  positions,  dealing  with  particular  men,  up  to  the 
more  general  and  abstract  positions,  deaUng  with  general  theories 
and  points  of  view.  Any  body  of  criticism  which  the  student  may 
pick  up  will,  however,  serve  as  well  for  the  purposes  of  analytical 
and  disciplinary  study.  Lowell,  Hazlitt,  DeQuincey,  Carlyle,  Rus- 
kin,  Mill,  Thackeray,  Addison,  Ben  Jonson,  Sidney,  George 
Eliot,  Hunt,  Jeffrey,  F.  W.  H.  Myers,  R.  W.  Church,  Mark  Patti- 
son,  G.  H.  Lewes,  and  among  living  critics,  Mr.  Collins,  Mr. 
Stedman,  Mr.  Morley,  Mr.  Courthorpe,  Mr.  Chesterton,  Mr. 
Archer,  Mr.  Birrell,  Mr.  Colvin,  Professor  Gosse,  Professor 
Saintsbury,  Professor  Ward,  Professor  Woodberry,  and  many 
others  are  among  the  best-known  and  substantial  critics.  It 
must  not  be  forgotten  that  criticism,  to  revert  to  Professor  Saints- 
bury's  dictum,  is  what  these  men  and  many  others  have  said  about 
books,  and  that  they  have  their  accepted  position  because  they  say 
things  that  we  gladly  hear,  though  often  with  reservation  and 
disagreement.  Nor  must  it  be  forgotten  that  the  aim  in  reading 
any  critic  is  not  only  to  find  out  his  opinions  but  to  ascertain 
how  he  arrived  at  them.  It  is  an  admirable  study,  so  long  as 
the  student  does  not  make  many  demands  on  the  Real  and 
the  Absolute. 


XXviii  INTRODUCTION 


VII 


To  turn  to  the  writing  of  criticism.  In  the  preface  to  one  of  the 
most  handy,  compact,  complete,  and  sensible  of  the  many  modern 
text-books  on  rhetoric,  the  author  ^  says,  "In  attempts  at  hterary 
criticism  or  anything  resembhng  it  the  average  student  produces 
rubbish."  And  the  author  adds,  with  a  competence  that  no  one 
can  question,  that  very  few  men  in  any  large  newspaper  office 
have  adequate  intellectual  equipment  for  producing  respectable 
criticism.  Those  of  us  who  have  had  much  experience  with  the 
literary  production  of  students  will  readily  admit  the  truth  of  the 
remark;  students'  criticisms  are  far  too  often  jejune,  attenuated, 
vague.  Young  writers  are  prone  to  glut  their  themes  with  such 
phrases,  to  cite  actual  examples,  as  "real  life,"  "rare  imaginative 
power  and  beauty,"  "a  personality  of  singular  charm,"  "a  certain 
unique  style"  (of  the  late  General  Lew  Wallace),  "natural," "spon- 
taneous," "deep  thought,"  "appreciation  of  nature,"  "striking  at 
the  root  of  things,"  "underlying  thought,"  "the  book  itself,"  "in 
harmony  with  its  theme,"  "singular  suggestiveness  and  beauty," 
"characteristic  tone,"  "distinctly  reflective  trend"  (of,  say,  J.  S. 
Mill),  a  "certain  something"  (there  or  wanting,  as  the  case  may 
be).  Wordsworth's  ballads,  we  are  told,  "lack  charm,  power, 
grace,  sympathy,  fine  sentiment,  effectiveness."  Sir  Thomas 
Browne's  style  "is  a  complete  expression  of  the  author's  person- 
ality." Or,  again,  "his  style  is  not  sustained."  Or,  referring 
to  the  same  eminent  mystic,  "The  man  himself  chiefly  interests 
us  —  a  man  of  distinctly  intellectual  quality,  and  of  great  rich- 
ness of  imagination  and  intensity  of  feeling."  George  Eliot 
"understands  human  nature,  "but  "many  of  her  characters  are 
not  universal."  "If  she  does  not  give  us  all  the  truth  about  life, 
she  touches  some  of  its  deeper  realities  —  She  loves  the  deeper 
problems."  "She  has  a  perfectly  marvellous  insight  into  human 
nature.  Few,  if  any,  of  her  characters  are  overdrawn."  Keats 
"left  a  poetic  heritage  rich  in  classical  themes,  cloaked  in  imagery 
both  tropical  and  delicate,  sensuous,  breathing  an  intense  love 
of  beauty  as  beauty."  His  "Eve  oj  St.  Agnes  holds  one  under 
a  spell  in  its  romantic  loveliness,  almost  as  strong  as  the  weird 
charm  of  the  Ancient  Mariner.    Such  suggestiveness,  such  exquisite 

*  H.  Laraont,  English  Composition. 


INTRODUCTION  Xxix 

colouring,  such  delicate  characterization,  of  youthful  Madeline 
and  Porphyro  contrasted  with  the  ancient  dame  and  beadsman." 
"To  a  Grecian  Urn  is  a  unique  treatment  of  an  unusual  idea. 
With  a  classic  breath  he  vitalizes  the  pictorial  decorations  of  the 
urn,  and  warms  them  with  the  atmosphere  of  ancient  Greece." 

Such  phrases  and  dicta,  the  list  of  which  might  be  indefinitely 
prolonged,  have  repeatedly  come  under  the  eye  of  the  reader  of 
themes.  To  condemn  them  and,  by  inference,  all  student  criti- 
cism is  an  easy  task,  and  it  is  still  easier,  as  probably  every  teacher 
has  been  inclined  to  do,  to  laugh  at  them.  But  one  must  plead  for 
a  distinction,  as  Arnold  would  say.  Courses  in  criticism,  the  writ- 
ing of  criticism,  have  assumed  a  pretty  definite  place,  just  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  in  many  colleges;  they  are  found  to  be  a  profitable 
source  of  discipline,  and  students  are  interested  in  the  subject. 
The  dicta  quoted,  to  be  sure,  are  not  interesting;  for  the  most 
part  they  stand  for  genuine  impressions  that  young  readers  have; 
but  they  are  either  very  vague  and  so  obvious  that  one  could  guess 
at  them  with  his  eyes  shut,  or  they  are  very  exclamatory,  and  in 
either  case  half  a  dozen  pages  of  such  talk  is  not  good.  They 
are  nearly  as  low  as  the  "red  blood"  or  the  "vital,  absorbing 
interest"  of  the  stories  that  "grip"  you,  like  the  influenza,  in  a 
newspaper  review  or  its  twin  brother,  the  publisher's  advertise- 
ment of  the  latest  novel.  The  remedy  is  largely  a  rhetorical  one, 
and  is  more  easily  stated  than  applied ;  for  the  application  of  any 
precept  usually  calls  for  much  fasting  and  prayer.  Stated,  it  is 
simply  that  students  should  be  required  to  say  fewer  things  and 
to  say  each  more  definitely. 

General  faults  of  most  frequent  occurrence  will  be  found  to  lie 
in  the  region  of  the  intellectual  conscience  and  in  the  manner  of 
expression.  As  to  the  first  of  these,  students  are  prone  to  say  too 
many  things  and  to  say  more  than  they  really  know.  They  deal, 
perhaps,  too  largely  with  personal  "appeal,"  yet,  if  their  expo- 
sition of  their  own  impressionswas  clear  and  forcible,  much  could  be 
said  for  such  limitation.  But  the  danger  is  that  they  will  look  at 
an  author  in  terms  of  a  naturally  narrow  experience,  instead  of  tak 
ing  him  in  his  own  terms,  merely,  so  to  speak,  as  a  matter  of  fact. 
A  student  will  sometimes  assert,  with  undoubted  truth,  surely,  that 
he  doesn't  see  how  Thoreau,  say,  could  have  lived  alone  in  the 
woods  and  cooked  his  own  meals  as  he  did,  because,  forsooth, 
modern  city  houses,  with  good  plumbing  and  a  bevy  of  cooks,  are 
good   enough   for   the   critic.     Doubtless   this  attitude   is   more 


XXX  INTRODUCTION 

wholesome  than  the  sentimental  one  would  be,  but  it  does  not  con- 
duce to  an  understanding  of  Thoreau.  Nor  is  it  possible  to  agree 
with  the  earnest  conviction  of  a  conscientious  young  woman  that 
Boswell  gives  a  wholly  wrong  impression  of  Johnson,  for  as  a  matter 
of  fact  nearly  everything  that  we  know  of  Johnson  comes  from 
Boswell.  A  common  attitude  is  for  students  to  apologize  for  their 
authors  —  for  Franklin,  say,  or  Poe  —  a  thing  that  seems  to  be 
quite  irrelevant.  Students  will  gravely  discuss  the  question  as  to 
whether  Emma  is  a  better  character  than  Romola,  wholly  for- 
getting to  discriminate  between  the  artistic  problem  involved  and 
the  personal  reaction,  and  assuming  too  blithely  that  the  two  are 
really  comparable.  Again,  a  young  critic  will  be  disappointed 
because  Maggie  TuUiver  "is  different  from  what  we  expected." 
Strictly  a  reader  has  no  business  to  expect  anything  different  from 
what  the  writer  chooses  to  give  him ;  the  reader  is  not  bound  to  like 
the  feast,  but  that  is  his  fault  for  having  his  expectations  too  keen. 
Or  rather  it  is  the  fault  of  the  teacher  from  too  much  preliminary 
praise.  The  main  point  is  that  young  writers,  when  they  commit 
any  such  typical  faults  as  have  been  mentioned,  when  they  fall  into 
vagueness,  or  when  they  make  sweeping  assertions,  err  in  that  they 
do  not  canvass  the  ground  to  see  what  is  really  possible  and  legiti- 
mate, logical  and  honest,  for  them  to  know.  As  an  eradicator  of 
such  intellectual  sins,  a  course  in  criticism  is  very  valuable.  "What 
does  it  mean?"  is  the  great  question  to  ask. 

As  to  the  rhetorical  side  of  the  matter,  the  chief  trouble  seems 
to  be  that  young  writers  try  to  say  too  many  things,  not  only  with 
resulting  vagueness,  but  a  generally  scattering  eft'ect.  Too  many 
points  —  that  is  a  thing  to  be  avoided  and  shunned.  One  small 
train  of  thought  is  about  all  that  anybody  can  manage  in  the  course 
of  five  hundred  or  one  thousand  words,  the  usual  length  for  college 
exercises.  Against  the  desirable  centrality  of  effect,  there  operates 
the  patchwork  si)irit.  It  is  typical,  widely  so,  for  students  to  begin 
with  an  introduction  —  "a  kind  of  an  introduction"  is  the  term  that 
usually  describes  it.  This,  however,  seldom  introduces :  the  idea 
comes  to  a  close,  an  impasse  is  formed,  into  the  head  wall  of  which 
the  writer  butts;  he  has  to  fall  back  to  a  new  subject  in  paragraph 
two.  This  is  often  a  summary  of  the  work  under  discussion,  and 
in  itself  it  may  be  a  good  one ;  the  trouble  is  that  it  has  no  necessary 
connection  with  the  comment  to  follow.  A  summary  is  really 
nothing  but  the  necessary  exposition  of  what  is  under  discussion, 
and  should  accordingly  be  written  with  that  in  view.     It  is  not  a 


INTRODUCTION  xxxi 

mere  appanage,  but  an  integral  part  of  the  whole  composition. 
Bagehot's  well-known  summary  of  Enoch  Arden  ^  is  an  excellent 
example  of  how  a  summary  may  be  subordinated  to  the  central 
idea.  Another  common  way  to  produce  a  scattering  effect  is 
to  use  the  term  "some"  as  a  qualifying  adjective  to  the  title: 
out  of  a  complete  and  possible  ten,  say,  topics  connected  with  the 
subject,  you  may  use  at  random  numbers,  5,  3,  and  8  — a  thing 
which  happens  in  many  themes. 

The  only  possible  motive  for  mentioning  these  and  other  typical 
faults  which  will  occur  to  every  experienced  teacher,  is  to  aid  in  the 
avoidance  of  them,  to  help  the  student  to  think  more  clearly. 
The  only  safe  assumption  in  the  teaching  of  composition  is  that 
the  young  writer  has  something  to  say  which  he  wishes  to  say  to 
somebody.  To  train  him  to  express  his  idea  and  to  express  it  in 
a  way  that  somebody  else  will  understand  and  be  interested  in  is, 
of  course,  the  only  end  of  instruction  in  composition,  —  that  is, 
after  the  most  elementary  training  is  done. 

A  word,  therefore,  of  a  more  positive  kind  may  be  added.  In 
single  themes  of  a  critical  sort,  it  is  well  to  pin  the  student  down  to 
definite  answers  to  the  three  immemorial  questions  of  Coleridge : 
What  has  the  author  tried  to  do?  How  has  he  done  it?  Is  it 
worth  doing?  The  answers  will  involve  a  good  deal  of  thinking, 
and  considerable  additional  skill  will  have  to  be  employed  to  make 
them  compose  into  a  fluent  and  solid  piece  of  work.  They  ad- 
mirably serve  to  put  a  writer  into  leading  strings  and  to  give  him 
his  structure.  They  are  also  sound,  in  that  they  take  into  account 
the  author's  point  of  view  in  criticising  his  work. 

A  more  extended  program  may  be  offered  to  advanced  students. 
It  is  not  a  bad  plan  —  subject,  of  course,  to  many  modifications 
of  detail  —  to  make  the  study  of  one  author  for  each  student 
the  basis  of  a  term's  writing.  The  author  should  naturally  be 
one  for  whom  the  student  has  some  previous  liking,  and  he  should 
be  of  medium  size.  Shakespeare,  Dante,  Milton,  are  altogether 
too  large  and  too  much  has  been  said  about  them.  On  the  other 
hand  it  is  doubtful  if  luminaries  of  the  magnitude  of  Mrs.  Hemans, 
"Barry  Cornwall,"  Allan  Ramsay,  Eugene  Field,  E.  R.  Sill,  even 
Holmes,  are  sufficiently  bright  to  lighten  the  way  of  most  students 
over  the  trackless  path  of  a  term  of  months.     DeQuincey,  Lowell, 

^Literary  Studies,  Vol.  II;  Wordsworth,  Tennyson,  and  Browning;  or  Pure, 
Ornate,  and  Grotesque  Art  in  Poetry.  Cf.  G.  R.  Carpenter  and  W.  T.  Brewster, 
Modern  English  Prose. 


XXxii  INTRODUCTION 

George  Eliot,  and  such  writers,  where  they  are  not  too  much 
talked  about,  are  more  ponderable.  It  is  a  wholesome  practice, 
by  way  of  introduction,  to  ask  each  student,  without  referring  to 
any  book  of  comment,  to  set  down,  in  a  preliminary  theme,  what 
he  knows  or  deems  it  essential  to  say  about  the  author  he  has 
chosen.  There  should  properly  follow  a  compact  biography  of  the 
author,  a  plain  matter  of  ascertainable  fact,  well  arranged  and 
divided,  without  criticism.  This  is  no  easy  task  ;  for  biographies 
by  young  writers  are  likely  to  be  top-heavy  and  lumpy.  A  third 
essay  might  properly  be  a  classification  of  the  author's  works,  with 
a  view  to  bringing  out  the  forms  that  he  uses,  their  relative  impor- 
tance, and  the  range  of  his  ideas.  It  may  be  remarked  in  passing 
that  literary  classification  is  a  stumbling-block  to  many  writers. 
It  seems  easy,  but  to  find,  in  practice,  some  fit  scheme  for  bringing 
out  the  ideas  and  forms  of  an  author  is  no  such  matter.  To  name 
a  type,  properly  to  characterize  and  illustrate  it,  and  to  list  the 
specific  writings  that  fall  under  the  class  —  the  essentials  of  good 
classification  in  literature  —  is  often  very  baffling.  Such  classi- 
fication may  be  based  on  the  author's  life,  as  with  Lamb  and 
Addison,  whose  careers  were  experiments  in  various  literary  forms, 
of  which  one  was  eminently  successful;  it  may  be  based  on  the 
occasion  of  his  writing,  as  with  Swift,  who  was  very  nearly  uniformly 
successful  in  all  that  he  did  after  he  was  once  started  on  his  literary 
way  ;  it  may  be  a  matter  of  substance,  as  with  the  somewhat 
elaborate  classification  of  DeQuincey's  writings  in  this  volume. 
There  are  other  appropriate  ways. 

With  a  good  classification  as  a  basis,  a  variety  of  possibilities 
offers  itself.  A  fourth  theme  may  be  written  on  a  man's  ideas, 
if  the  intellectual  side  is  the  stronger,  or  on  his  quality  if  it 
is  his  literary  feeling  that  predominates.  That  which  distin- 
guishes him  from  other  writers  of  his  class,  intellectually  and 
spiritually,  is  surely  a  thing  worth  exposition.  Another  impor- 
tant source  of  material  for  a  theme  is  found  in  the  author's  literary 
art,  his  method  of  approaching  his  task,  his  style,  considered 
as  a  combination  of  phenomena.  What  things  are  characteristic 
and  constant  in  the  writings  of  Arnold,  or  Keats,  or  Landor? 
Naturally  discussion  of  these  points  tends  to  run  off  into  questions 
of  quality,  but  the  two  may  approximately  be  kept  apart.  Any 
criticism  that  the  student  has  to  offer,  either  by  way  of  personal 
impression  or  impersonal  discussion,  is  a  good  subject  for  another 
essay.     Here,  experience  shows,  students  are  likely  to  forget  what 


INTRODUCTION  Xxxiii 

they  have  been  talking  about  in  their  preceding  themes :  in  biog- 
raphy, classification,  and  account  of  quality,  a  student  may  have 
shown  George  Eliot,  say,  to  be  a  great  moralist;  and  yet  the  criti- 
cism may  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  ethics  of  George  Eliot  but  may 
deal  with  the  irrelevant  question  of  the  mechanics  of  her  verse.  In 
short,  one  should  criticise  along  the  lines  indicated  by  the  classi- 
fication and  not  abjure  all  preceding  labour  and  knowledge.  With 
regard  to  another  theme,  it  is  most  important  of  all  that  a  student 
should  learn  to  state,  just  as  a  plain  matter  of  fact,  what  is  the  vogue; 
the  estimation,  the  place,  etc.,  in  which  his  author  is  held.  Such 
"collective"  criticism  requires  considerable  research,  but  is  a 
most  necessary  check  to  one's  own  judgment. 

Any  special  program  is,  of  course,  merely  by  way  of  illustra- 
tion and  suggestion  ;  the  main  point  is  that  young  writers  will 
avoid  the  production  of  rubbish  in  criticism,  only  by  following 
sound  expository  and  argumentative  methods.  The  good  critic, 
like  other  good  men,  is  doubtless  more  born  than  made;  but 
there  is  no  real  reason  why  any  painstaking  student  may  not  learn 
clearly,  adequately,  and  in  an  interesting  way,  to  express  the  faith 
that  is  in  him.  If  the  foregoing  argument  is  sound,  the  fact 
that  criticism  is  largely  nothing  more  than  the  expression  of 
personal,  often  temperamental,  opinion,  —  checked,  for  the  better 
part,  by  historical  and  rational  tests,  —  this  fact  should  make  the 
young  critic  more  confident  of  his  own  views  and,  at  the  same 
time,  more  willing  to  modify  them  and  to  test  them. 


LESLIE   STEPHEN 
(1832-1904) 

wood's  halfpence 

[Chapter  VII.  of  the  Life  of  Swift  in  the  English  Men  of  Letters  Series] 

In  one  of  Scott's  finest  novels  the  old  Cameronian  preacher,  who 
had  been  left  for  dead  by  Claverhouse's  troopers,  suddenly  rises 
to  confront  his  conquerors,  and  spends  his  last  breath  in  denounc- 
ing the  oppressors  of  the  saints.  Even  such  an  apparition  was 
Jonathan  Swift  to  comfortable  Whigs  who  were  flourishing  in  the 
l^lace  of  Harley  and  St.  John,  when,  after  ten  years'  quiescence, 
he  suddenly  stepped  into  the  political  arena.  After  the  first 
crushing  fall  he  had  abandoned  partial  hope,  and  contented  him- 
self with  establishing  supremacy  in  his  chapter.  But  undying 
wrath  smouldered  in  his  breast  till  time  came  for  an  outburst. 

No  man  had  ever  learnt  more  thoroughly  the  lesson,  "Put  not 
your  faith  in  princes;"  or  had  been  impressed  with  a  lower  esti- 
mate of  the  wisdom  displayed  by  the  rulers  of  the  world.  He  had 
been  behind  the  scenes,  and  knew  that  the  wisdom  of  great  min- 
isters meant  just  enough  cunning  to  court  the  ruin  which  a  little 
common  sense  would  have  avoided.  Corruption  was  at  the  prow 
and  folly  at  the  helm.  The  selfish  ring  which  he  had  denounced 
so  fiercely  had  triumphed.  It  had  triumphed,  as  he  held,  by 
flattering  the  new  dynasty,  hoodwinking  the  nation,  and  maligning 
its  antagonists.  The  cynical  theory  of  politics  was  not  for  him, 
as  for  some  comfortable  cynics,  an  abstract  proposition,  which 
mattered  very  little  to  a  sensible  man,  but  was  embodied  in  the 
bitter  wrath  with  which  he  regarded  his  triumphant  adversaries. 
Pessimism  is  perfectly  compatible  with  bland  enjoyment  of  the 
good  things  in  a  bad  world;  but  Swift's  pessimism  was  not  of  this 


2  LESLIE  STEPHEN 

type.     It  meant  energetic  hatred  of  definite  things  and  people  who 
were  always  before  him. 

With  this  feeling  he  had  come  to  Ireland;  and  Ireland  —  I  am 
speaking  of  a  century  and  a  half  ago  —  was  the  opprobrium  of 
English  statesmanship.  There  Swift  had  (or  thought  he  had) 
always  before  him  a  concrete  example  of  the  basest  form  of  tyranny. 
By  Ireland,  I  have  said,  Swift  meant,  in  the  first  place,  the  Eng- 
lish in  Ireland.  In  the  last  years  of  his  sanity  he  protested  indig- 
nantly against  the  confusion  between  the  "savage  old  Irish"  and 
the  English  gentry,  who,  he  said,  were  much  better  bred,  spoke 
better  English,  and  were  more  civilized  than  the  inhabitants  of 
many  English  counties.^  He  retained  to  the  end  of  his  life  his 
antipathy  to  the  Scotch  colonists.  He  opposed  their  demand  for 
political  equality  as  fiercely  in  the  last  as  in  his  first  political  utter- 
ances. He  contrasted  them  unfavourably  ^  with  the  Catholics, 
who  had,  indeed,  been  driven  to  revolt  by  massacre  and  confisca- 
tion under  Puritan  rule,  but  who  were  now,  he  declared,  "true 
Whigs,  in  the  best  and  most  proper  sense  of  the  word,"  and 
thoroughly  loyal  to  the  house  of  Hanover.  Had  there  been  a 
danger  of  a  Catholic  revolt,  Swift's  feelings  might  have  been  differ- 
ent; but  he  always  held  that  they  were  "as  inconsiderable  as 
the  women  and  children,"  mere  "hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of 
water,"  "out  of  all  capacity  of  doing  any  mischief,  if  they  were 
ever  so  well  inclined."  ^  Looking  at  them  in  this  way,  he  felt 
a  sincere  compassion  for  their  misery  and  a  bitter  resentment 
against  their  oppressors.  The  English,  he  said  in  a  remarkable 
letter,^  should  be  ashamed  of  their  reproaches  of  Irish  dulness, 
ignorance,  and  cowardice.  Those  defects  were  the  products  of 
slavery.  He  declared  that  the  poor  cottagers  had  "a  much  better 
natural  taste  for  good  sense,  humour,  and  raillery  than  ever  I 
observed  among  people  of  the  like  sort  in  England.  But  the  mil- 
lions of  oppressions  they  lie  under,  the  tyranny  of  their  landlords, 
the  ridiculous  zeal  of  their  priests,  and  the  misery  of  the  whole 
nation,  have  been  enough  to  damp  the  best  spirits  under  the  sun." 
Such  a  view  is  now  commonplace  enough.  It  was  then  a  heresy  to 
English  statesmen,  who  thought  that  nobody  but  a  Papist  or  a 
Jacobite  could  object  to  the  tyranny  of  Whigs. 

Swift's  diagnosis  of   the  chronic  Irish  disease  was  thoroughly 
political.     He  considered  that  Irish  misery  sprang  from  the  sub- 

'  Letter  to  Pope,  July  13,  1737.  ^  Letters  on  Sacramental  Test  in  1738. 

-  Catholic  Reasons  for  Repealing  the  Test.       *  To  Sir  Charles  Wigan,  July,  1732. 


WOOD'S  HALFPENCE  3 

jection  to  a  government  not  intentionally  cruel,  but  absolutely 
selfish;  to  which  the  Irish  revenue  meant  so  much  convenient 
political  plunder,  and  which  acted  on  the  principle  quoted  from 
Cowley,  that  the  happiness  of  Ireland  should  not  weigh  against 
the  "  least  conveniency"  of  England.  He  summed  up  his  views 
in  a  remarkable  letter,*  to  be  presently  mentioned,  the  substance 
of  which  had  been  orally  communicated  to  Walpole.  He  said  to 
Walpole,  as  he  said  in  every  published  utterance:  first,  that  the 
colonists  were  still  Englishmen,  and  entitled  to  English  rights; 
secondly,  that  their  trade  was  deliberately  crushed,  purely  for  the 
benefit  of  the  English  of  England ;  thirdly,  that  all  valuable  pre- 
ferments were  bestowed  upon  men  born  in  England,  as  a  matter  of 
course ;  and,  finally,  that  in  consequence  of  this  the  upper  classes, 
deprived  of  all  other  openings,  were  forced  to  rack-rent  their 
tenants  to  such  a  degree  that  not  one  farmer  in  the  kingdom  out 
of  a  hundred  "could  afford  shoes  or  stockings  to  his  children,  or 
to  eat  flesh  or  drink  anything  better  than  sour  milk  and  water 
twice  in  a  year;  so  that  the  whole  country,  except  the  Scotch 
plantation  in  the  north,  is  a  scene  of  misery  and  desolation  hardly 
to  be  matched  on  this  side  Lapland."  A  modern  reformer  would 
give  the  first  and  chief  place  to  this  social  misery.  It  is  charac- 
teristic that  Swift  comes  to  it  as  a  consequence  from  the  injustice 
to  his  own  class:  as,  again,  that  he  appeals  to  Walpole,  not  on  the 
simple  ground  that  the  people  are  wretched,  but  on  the  ground  that 
they  will  be  soon  unable  to  pay  the  tribute  to  England,  which  he 
reckons  at  a  million  a  year.  But  his  conclusion  might  be  accepted 
by  any  Irish  patriot.  Whatever,  he  says,  can  make  a  country  poor 
and  despicable  concurs  in  the  case  of  Ireland.  The  nation  is  con- 
trolled by  laws  to  which  it  does  not  consent ;  disowned  by  its  breth- 
ren and  countrymen;  refused  the  liberty  of  trading  even  in  its 
natural  commodities;  forced  to  seek  for  justice  many  hundred 
miles  by  sea  and  land;  rendered  in  a  manner  incapable  of  serv- 
ing the  King  and  country  in  any  place  of  honour,  trust,  or  profit ; 
whilst  the  governors  have  no  sympathy  with  the  governed,  except 
what  may  occasionally  arise  from  the  sense  of  justice  and  philan- 
thropy. 

I  am  not  to  ask  how  far  Swift  was  right  in  his  judgments. 
Every  line  which  he  wrote  shows  that  he  was  thoroughly  sincere 
and  profoundly  stirred  by  his  convictions.  A  remarkable  pam- 
phlet, published  in  1720,  contained  his  first  utterance  upon  the 

*  To  Lord  Peterborough,  April  21,  1726. 


4  LESLIE  STEPHEN 

subject.  It  is  an  exhortation  to  the  Irish  to  use  only  Irish  manu- 
factures. He  applies  to  Ireland  the  fable  of  Arachne  and  Pallas. 
The  goddess,  indignant  at  being  equalled  in  spinning,  turned  her 
rival  into  a  spider,  to  spin  forever  out  of  her  own  bowels  in  a 
narrow  compass.  He  always,  he  says,  pitied  poor  Arachne  for  so 
cruel  and  unjust  a  sentence,  "which,  however,  is  fully  executed 
upon  us  by  England  with  further  additions  of  rigour  and  severity; 
for  the  greatest  part  of  our  bowels  and  vitals  is  extracted,  without 
allowing  us  the  liberty  of  spinning  and  weaving  them."  Swift 
of  course  accepts  the  economic  fallacy  equally  taken  for  granted 
by  his  opponents,  and  fails  to  see  that  England  and  Ireland  in- 
jured themselves  as  well  as  each  other  by  refusing  to  interchange 
their  productions.  But  he  utters  forcibly  his  righteous  indig- 
nation against  the  contemptuous  injustice  of  the  English  rulers, 
in  consequence  of  which  the  "miserable  people"  are  being  re- 
duced "to  a  worse  condition  than  the  peasants  in  France,  or  the 
vassals  in  Germany  and  Poland."  Slaves,  he  says,  have  a  natural 
disposition  to  be  tyrants;  and  he  himself,  when  his  betters  give 
him  a  kick,  is  apt  to  revenge  it  with  six  upon  his  footman.  That 
is  how  the  landlords  treat  their  tenantry. 

The  printer  of  this  pamphlet  was  prosecuted.  The  chief 
justice  (Whitshed)  sent  back  the  jury  nine  times  and  kept  them 
eleven  hours  before  they  would  consent  to  bring  in  a  "special 
verdict."  The  unpopularity  of  the  prosecution  became  so  great 
that  it  was  at  last  dropped.  Four  years  afterwards  a  more  violent 
agitation  broke  out.  A  patent  had  been  given  to  a  certain  William 
Wood  for  supplying  Ireland  with  a  copper  coinage.  Many  com- 
plaints had  been  made,  and  in  September,  1723,  addresses  were 
voted  by  the  Irish  Houses  of  Parliament,  declaring  that  the  patent 
had  been  obtained  by  clandestine  and  false  representations; 
that  it  was  mischievous  to  the  country ;  and  that  Wood  had  been 
guilty  of  frauds  in  his  coinage.  They  were  pacified  by  vague 
promises;  but  Walpole  went  on  with  the  scheme  on  the  strength 
of  a  favourable  report  of  a  committee  of  the  Privy  Council;  and 
the  excitement  was  already  serious  when  (in  1724)  Swift  published 
the  Drapier's  Letters,  which  give  him  his  chief  title  to  eminence 
as  a  patriotic  agitator. 

Swift  either  shared  or  took  advantage  of  the  general  belief  that 
the  mysteries  of  the  currency  are  unfathomable  to  the  human 
intelligence.  They  have  to  do  with  that  world  of  financial  magic 
in  which  wealth  may  be  made  out  of  paper,  and  all  ordinary 


WOOD'S  HALFPENCE  5 

relations  of  cause  and  effect  are  suspended.  There  is,  however, 
no  real  mystery  about  the  halfpence.  The  small  coins  which 
do  not  form  part  of  the  legal  tender  may  be  considered  primarily 
as  counters.  A  penny  is  a  penny,  so  long  as  twei\e  are  change 
for  a  shilling.  It  is  not  in  the  least  necessary  for  this  purpose 
that  the  copper  contained  in  the  twelve  penny  pieces  should  be 
worth  or  nearly  worth  a  shilling.  A  sovereign  can  never  be  worth 
much  more  than  the  gold  of  which  it  is  made.  But  at  the  present 
day  bronze  worth  only  twopence  is  coined  into  twelve  penny  pieces.* 
The  coined  bronze  is  worth  six  times  as  much  as  the  uncoined. 
The  small  coins  must  have  some  intrinsic  value  to  deter  forgery, 
and  must  be  made  of  good  materials  to  stand  wear  and  tear.  If 
these  conditions  be  observed,  and  a  proper  number  be  issued,  the 
value  of  the  penny  will  be  no  more  affected  by  the  value  of  the 
copper  than  the  value  of  the  banknote  by  that  of  the  paper  on 
which  it  is  WTitten.  This  opinion  assumes  that  the  copper  coins 
cannot  be  offered  or  demanded  in  payment  of  any  but  trifling 
debts.  The  halfpence  coined  by  Wood  seem  to  have  fulfilled 
these  conditions,  and  as  copper  worth  twopence  (on  the  lowest 
computation)  was  coined  into  ten  halfpence,  worth  fivepence, 
their  intrinsic  value  was  more  than  double  that  of  modern  half- 
pence. 

The  halfpence,  then,  were  not  objectionable  upon  this  ground. 
Nay,  it  would  have  been  wasteful  to  make  them  more  valuable. 
It  would  have  been  as  foolish  to  use  more  copper  for  the  pence 
as  to  make  the  works  of  a  watch  of  gold  if  brass  is  equally  dur- 
able and  convenient.  But  another  consequence  is  equally  clear. 
The  effect  of  Wood's  patent  was  that  a  mass  of  copper  worth 
about  60,000/.^  became  worth  100,800/.  in  the  shape  of  halfpenny 
pieces.  There  was,  therefore,  a  balance  of  about  40,000/.  to  pay 
for  the  expenses  of  coinage.  It  would  have  been  waste  to  get 
rid  of  this  by  putting  more  copper  in  the  coins;  but,  if  so  large  a 
profit  arose  from  the  transaction,  it  would  go  to  somebody.  At 
the  present  day  it  would  be  brought  into  the  national  treasury. 
This  was  not  the  way  in  which  business  was  done  in  Ireland. 


*  The  ton  of  bronze,  I  am  informed,  is  coined  into  108,000  pence;  that  is,  450/. 
The  metal  is  worth  about  74/. 

2  Simon,  in  his  work  on  the  Irish  coinage,  makes  the  profit  60,000/. ;  but  he 
reckons  the  copper  at  15.  a  pound,  whereas  from  the  Report  of  the  Privy  Council 
it  would  seem  to  be  properly  is.  6d.  a  pound.  Swift  and  most  later  writers  say 
108,000/.,  but  the  right  sum  is  100,800/.  —  360  tons  coined  into  2s.  6i.  a  pound. 


6  LESLIE  STEPHEN 

Wood  was  to  pay  looo/.  a  year  for  fourteen  years  to  the  Crown.* 
But  14,000/.  still  leaves  a  large  margin  for  profit.  What  was  to 
become  of  it?  According  to  the  admiring  biographer  of  Sir  R. 
Walpole  the  patent  had  been  originally  given  by  Lord  Sunderland 
to  the  Duchess  of  Kendal,  a  lady  whom  the  King  delighted  to 
honour.  She  already  received  3000/.  a  year  in  pensions  upon 
the  Irish  Establishment,  and  she  sold  this  patent  to  Wood  for 
10,000/.  Enough  was  still  left  to  give  Wood  a  handsome  profit; 
as  in  transactions  of  this  kind  every  accomplice  in  a  dirty  business 
e.xpects  to  be  well  paid.  So  handsome,  indeed,  was  the  profit 
that  Wood  received  ultimately  a  pension  of  3000/.  for  eight  years  — 
24,000/.,  that  is  —  in  consideration  of  abandoning  the  patent. 
It  was  right  and  proper  that  a  profit  should  be  made  on  the  trans- 
action, but  shameful  that  it  should  be  divided  between  the  King's 
mistress  and  William  Wood,  and  that  the  bargain  should  be  struck 
without  consulting  the  Irish  representatives,  and  maintained  in 
spite  of  their  protests.  The  Duchess  of  Kendal  was  to  be  allowed 
to  take  a  share  of  the  wretched  halfpence  in  the  pocket  of  every 
Irish  beggar.  A  more  disgraceful  transaction  could  hardly  be 
imagined,  or  one  more  calculated  to  justify  Swift's  view  of  the 
selfishness  and  corruption  of  the  English  rulers. 

Swift  saw  his  chance,  and  went  to  work  in  characteristic  fashion, 
with  unscrupulous  audacity  of  statement,  guided  by  the  keenest 
strategical  instinct.  He  struck  at  the  heart  as  vigorously  as  he 
had  done  in  the  Examiner,  but  with  resentment  sharpened  by 
ten  years  of  exile.  It  was  not  safe  to  speak  of  the  Duchess  of 
Kendal's  share  in  the  transaction,  though  the  story,  as  poor  Arch- 
deacon Coxe  pathetically  declares,  was  industriously  propagated. 
But  the  case  against  Wood  was  all  the  stronger.  Is  he  so  wicked, 
asks  Swift,  as  to  suppose  that  a  nation  is  to  be  ruined  that  he  may 
gain  three  or  four  score  thousand  pounds?  Hampden  went  to 
prison,  he  says,  rather  than  pay  a  few  shillings  wrongfully;  I,  says 
Swift,  would  rather  be  hanged  than  have  all  my  "j)ropcrty  ta.xed 
at  seventeen  shillings  in  the  pound  at  the  arbitrary  will  and  pleasure 
of  the  venerable  Mr.  Wood."  A  simple  constitutional  precedent 
might  rouse  a  Hampden;  but  to  stir  a  popular  agitation  it  is  as 
well  to  show  that  the  evil  actually  inflicted  is  gigantic,  indepen- 
dently of  possible  results.  It  reciuires,  indeed,  some  audacity 
to  prove  that  debasement  of  the  copper  currency  can  amount  to 

'  Monck  Mason  says  only  300/.  a  year,  but  this  is  the  sum  mentioned  in  the 
Report  and  by  Swift. 


WOOD'S  HALFPENCE  7 

a  tax  of  seventeen  shillings  in  the  pound  on  all  property.  Here, 
however,  Swift  might  simply  throw  the  reins  upon  the  neck  of 
his  fancy.  Anybody  may  make  any  inferences  he  pleases  in  the 
mysterious  regions  of  currency;  and  no  inferences,  it  seems,  were 
too  audacious  for  his  hearers,  though  we  are  left  to  doubt  how 
far  Swift's  wrath  had  generated  delusions  in  his  own  mind,  and 
how  far  he  perceived  that  other  minds  were  ready  to  be  deluded. 
He  revels  in  prophesying  the  most  extravagant  consequences. 
The  country  will  be  undone;  the  tenants  will  not  be  able  to  pay 
their  rents;  "the  farmers  must  rob,  or  beg,  or  leave  the  country; 
the  shopkeepers  in  this  and  every  other  town  must  break  or  starve; 
the  squire  will  hoard  up  all  his  good  money  to  send  to  England 
and  keep  some  poor  tailor  or  weaver  in  his  house,  who  will  be 
glad  to  get  bread  at  any  rate."  *  Concrete  facts  are  given  to  help 
the  imagination.  Squire  Connolly  must  have  250  horses  to  bring 
his  half-yearly  rents  to  town ;  and  the  poor  man  will  have  to  pay 
thirty-six  of  Wood's  halfpence  to  get  a  quart  of  twopenny  ale. 

How  is  this  proved?  One  argument  is  a  sufficient  specimen. 
Nobody,  according  to  the  patent,  was  to  be  forced  to  take  Wood's 
halfpence;  nor  could  any  one  be  obliged  to  receive  more  than 
fivepence  halfpenny  in  any  one  payment.  This,  of  course,  meant 
that  the  halfpence  could  only  be  used  as  change,  and  a  man  must 
pay  his  debts  in  silver  or  gold  whenever  it  was  possible  to  use  a 
sixpence.  It  upsets  Swift's  statement  about  Squire  Connolly's 
rents.  But  Swift  is  equal  to  the  emergency.  The  rule  means, 
he  says,  that  every  man  must  take  fivepence  halfpenny  in  every 
payment,  if  it  be  offered;  which,  on  the  next  page,  becomes  simply 
in  every  payment;  therefore,  making  an  easy  assumption  or  two, 
he  reckons  that  you  will  receive  160/.  a  year  in  these  halfpence; 
and  therefore  (by  other  assumptions)  lose  140/.  a  year.^  It  might 
have  occurred  to  Swift,  one  would  think,  that  both  parties  to  the 
transaction  could  not  possibly  be  losers.  But  he  calmly  assumes 
that  the  man  who  pays  will  lose  in  proportion  to  the  increased 
number  of  coins ;  and  the  man  who  receives,  in  proportion  to  the 
depreciated  value  of  each  coin.  He  does  not  see,  or  think  it  worth 
notice,  that  the  two  losses  obviously  counterbalance  each  other; 
and  he  has  an  easy  road  to  prophesying  absolute  ruin  for  every- 
body. It  would  be  almost  as  great  a  compliment  to  call  this 
sophistry  as  to  dignify  with  the  name  of  satire  a  round  assertion 
that  an  honest  man  is  a  cheat  or  a  rogue. 

1  Letter  I.  2  Letter  II. 


8  LESLIE  STEPHEN 

The  real  grievance,  however,  shows  through  the  sham  argument. 
"It  is  no  loss  of  honour,"  thought  Swift,  "to  submit  to  the  Hon; 
but  who,  with  the  figure  of  a  man,  can  think  with  patience  of  being 
devoured  aUve  by  a  rat?"  Why  should  Wood  have  this  profit 
(even  if  more  reasonably  estimated)  in  defiance  of  the  wishes  of 
the  nation?  It  is,  says  Swift,  because  he  is  an  Englishman  and 
has  great  friends.  He  proposes  to  meet  the  attemj)t  by  a  general 
agreement  not  to  take  the  halfpence.  Briefly,  the  halfpence  were 
to  be  "Boycotted." 

Before  this  second  letter  was  written  the  English  ministers  had 
become  alarmed.  A  report  of  the  Privy  Council  (July  24,  1724) 
defended  the  patent,  but  ended  by  recommending  that  the  amount 
to  be  coined  should  be  reduced  to  40,000/.  Carteret  was  sent  out 
as  Lord  Lieutenant  to  get  this  compromise  accepted.  Swift 
replied  by  a  third  letter,  arguing  the  question  of  the  patent,  which 
he  can  "never  suppose,"  or,  in  other  words,  which  everybody  knew, 
to  have  been  granted  as  a  "job  for  the  interest  of  some  particular 
person."  He  vigorously  asserts  that  the  patent  can  never  make 
it  obligatory  to  accept  the  halfpence,  and  tells  a  story  much  to 
the  purpose  from  old  Leicester  experience.  The  justices  had 
reduced  the  price  of  ale  to  three-halfpence  a  quart.  One  of  them, 
therefore,  requested  that  they  would  make  another  order  to  appoint 
who  should  drink  it,  "for,  by  God,"  said  he,  "I  will  not." 

The  argument  thus  naturally  led  to  a  further  and  more  impor- 
tant question.  The  discussion  as  to  the  patent  brought  forward 
the  question  of  right.  Wood  and  his  friends,  according  to  Swift, 
had  begun  to  declare  that  the  resistance  meant  Jacobitism  and 
rebellion;  they  asserted  that  the  Irish  were  ready  to  shake  off 
their  dependence  upon  the  Crown  of  England.  Swift  took  up 
the  challenge  and  answered  resolutely  and  eloquently.  He  took 
up  the  broadest  ground.  Ireland,  he  declared,  depended  upon 
England  in  no  other  sense  than  that  in  which  England  depended 
upon  Ireland.  Whoever  thinks  otherwise,  he  said,  "I,  M.  B. 
Drapier,  desire  to  be  excepted ;  for  I  declare,  next  under  God,  I 
depend  only  on  the  King  my  sovereign,  and  the  laws  of  my  own 
country.  I  am  so  far,"  he  added,  "from  depending  upon  the 
people  of  England,  that,  if  they  should  rebel,  I  would  take  arms 
and  lose  every  drop  of  my  blood  to  hinder  the  Pretender  from 
being  King  of  Ireland." 

It  had  been  reported  that  somebody  (Walpole  presumably) 
had  ?wf)rn  to  thrust  the  halfpence  down  the  throats  of  the  Irish. 


WOOD'S  HALFPENCE  9 

The  remedy,  replied  Swift,  is  totally  in  your  own  hands,  "and 
therefore  I  have  digressed  a  little  ...  to  let  you  see  that  by 
the  laws  of  God,  of  nature,  of  nations,  and  of  your  own  country, 
you  are  and  ought  to  be  as  free  a  people  as  your  brethren  in  Eng- 
land." As  Swift  had  already  said  in  the  third  letter,  no  one  could 
believe  that  any  English  patent  would  stand  half  an  hour  after  an 
address  from  the  English  Houses  of  Parliament  such  as  that 
which  had  been  passed  against  Wood's  by  the  Irish  Parliament. 
Whatever  constitutional  doubts  might  be  raised,  it  was,  therefore, 
come  to  be  the  plain  question  whether  or  not  the  English  ministers 
should  simply  override  the  wishes  of  the  Irish  nation. 

Carteret,  upon  landing,  began  by  trying  to  suppress  his  adver- 
sary. A  reward  of  300/.  was  offered  for  the  discovery  of  the  author 
of  the  fourth  letter.  A  prosecution  was  ordered  against  the 
printer.  Swift  went  to  the  levee  of  the  Lord  Lieutenant,  and 
reproached  him  bitterly  for  his  severity  against  a  poor  tradesman 
who  had  published  papers  for  the  good  of  his  country.  Carteret 
answered  in  a  happy  quotation  from  Virgil,  a  feat  which  always 
seems  to  have  brought  consolation  to  the  statesman  of  that 
day:  — 

"Res  dura  et  regni  novitas  me  talia  cogunt 
Moliri."  ' 

Another  story  is  more  characteristic.  Swift's  butler  had  acted  as 
his  amanuensis,  and  absented  himself  one  night  whilst  the  proc- 
lamation was  running.  Swift  thought  that  the  butler  was  either 
treacherous  or  presuming  upon  his  knowledge  of  the  secret.  As 
soon  as  the  man  returned  he  ordered  him  to  strip  off  his  livery 
and  begone.  "I  am  in  your  power,"  he  said,  "and  for  that  very 
reason  I  will  not  stand  your  insolence. ' '  The  poor  butler  departed , 
but  preserved  his  fidelity;  and  Swift,  when  the  tempest  had 
blown  over,  rewarded  him  by  appointing  him  verger  in  the  cathe- 
dral. The  grand  jury  threw  out  the  bill  against  the  printer  in 
spite  of  all  Whitshed's  efforts;  they  were  discharged;  and  the 
next  grand  jury  presented  Wood's  halfpence  as  a  nuisance.  Car- 
teret gave  way,  the  patent  was  surrendered,  and  Swift  might 
congratulate  himself  upon  a  complete  victory. 

The  conclusion  is  in  one  respect  rather  absurd.  The  Irish 
succeeded  in  rejecting  a  real  benefit  at  the  cost  of  paying  Wood 

» [The  savage  state  of  affairs  and  the  rawness  of  the  realm  compel  me  to  do 
such  things.] 


lO  LESLIE  STEPHEN 

the  profit  which  he  would  have  made,  had  he  been  allowed  to 
confer  it.  Another  point  must  be  admitted.  Swift's  audacious 
misstatements  were  successful  for  the  time  in  rousing  the  spirit 
of  the  people.  They  have  led,  however,  to  a  very  erroneous 
estimate  of  the  whole  case.  English  statesmen  and  historians  ' 
have  found  it  so  easy  to  expose  his  errors  that  they  have  thought 
his  whole  case  absurd.  The  grievance  was  not  what  it  was  repre- 
sented; therefore  it  is  argued  that  there  was  no  grievance.  The 
very  essence  of  the  case  was  that  the  Irish  people  were  to  be  plun- 
dered by  the  German  mistress;  and  such  plunder  was  possible 
because  the  English  people,  as  Swift  says,  never  thought  of  Ire- 
land except  when  there  was  nothing  else  to  be  talked  of  in  the 
coffee-houses.^  Owing  to  the  conditions  of  the  controversy  this 
grievance  only  came  out  gradually,  and  could  never  be  fully 
stated.  Swift  could  never  do  more  than  hint  at  the  transaction. 
His  letters  (including  three  which  appeared  after  the  last  men- 
tioned, enforcing  the  same  case)  have  often  been  cited  as  models 
of  eloquence,  and  compared  to  Demosthenes.  We  must  make 
some  deduction  from  this,  as  in  the  case  of  his  former  political 
pamphlets.  The  intensity  of  his  absorption  in  the  immediate  end 
deprives  them  of  some  literary  merits ;  and  we,  to  whom  the  soph- 
istries are  palpable  enough,  are  apt  to  resent  them.  Anybody 
can  be  effective  in  a  way,  if  he  chooses  to  lie  boldly.  Yet,  in 
another  sense,  it  is  hard  to  over-praise  the  letters.  They  have 
in  a  high  degree  the  peculiar  stamp  of  Swift's  genius:  the  vein 
of  the  most  nervous  common-sense  and  pithy  assertion,  with  an 
undercurrent  of  intense  passion,  the  more  impressive  because  it 
is  never  allowed  to  exhale  in  mere  rhetoric. 

Swift's  success,  the  dauntless  front  which  he  had  shown  to 
the  oppressor,  made  him  the  idol  of  his  countrymen.  A  Drapier's 
Club  was  formed  in  his  honour,  which  collected  the  letters  and 
drank  toasts  and  sang  songs  to  celebrate  their  hero.  In  a  sad 
letter  to  Pope,  in  1737,  he  complains  that  none  of  his  equals  care 
for  him;  but  adds  that  as  he  walks  the  streets  he  has  "a  thousand 
hats  and  blessings  upon  old  scores  which  those  we  call  the  gentry 
have  forgot."  The  people  received  him  as  their  champion.  When 
he  returned  from  England,  in  1726,  bells  were  rung,  bonfires 
lighted,  and  a  guard  of  honour  escorted  him  to  the  deanery. 

'  See,  for  example,  I.ord  Stanhope's  account.     For  the  other  view  see  Mr. 
Lecky's  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century  and  Mr.  Froude's  English  in  Ireland. 
="  Letter  IV. 


WOOD'S  HALFPENCE  11 

Towns  voted  him  their  freedom  and  received  him  like  a  prince. 
When  Walpole  spoke  of  arresting  him  a  prudent  friend  told  the 
minister  that  the  messenger  would  require  a  guard  of  ten  thou- 
sand soldiers.  Corporations  asked  his  advice  in  elections,  and 
the  weavers  appealed  to  him  on  questions  about  their  trade.  In 
one  of  his  satires  ^  Swift  had  attacked  a  certain  Sergeant  Bettes- 

worth :  — 

"Thus  at  the  bar  the  booby  Bettesworth, 
Though  half-a-crown  o'erpays  his  sweat's  worth." 

Bettesworth  called  upon  him  with,  as  Swift  reports,  a  knife  in 
his  pocket,  and  complained  in  such  terms  as  to  imply  some  inten- 
tion of  personal  violence.  The  neighbours  instantly  sent  a  deputa- 
tion to  the  Dean,  proposing  to  take  vengeance  upon  Bettesworth ; 
and  though  he  induced  them  to  disperse  peaceably,  they  formed 
a  guard  to  watch  the  house;  and  Bettesworth  complained  that 
his  attack  upon  the  Dean  had  lowered  his  professional  income 
by  1200/.  a  year.  A  quaint  example  of  his  popularity  is  given 
by  Sheridan.  A  great  crowd  had  collected  to  see  an  eclipse. 
Swift  thereupon  sent  out  the  bellman  to  give  notice  that  the  eclipse 
had  been  postponed  by  the  Dean's  orders,  and  the  crowd  dis- 
persed. 

Influence  with  the  people,  however,  could  not  bring  Swift 
back  to  power.  At  one  time  there  seemed  to  be  a  gleam  of  hope. 
Swift  visited  England  twice  in  1726  and  1727.  He  paid  long 
visits  to  his  old  friend  Pope,  and  again  met  Bolingbroke,  now 
returned  from  e.xile,  and  trying  to  make  a  place  in  English  politics. 
Peterborough  introduced  the  Dean  to  Walpole,  to  whom  Swift 
detailed  his  views  upon  Irish  politics.  Walpole  was  the  last 
man  to  set  about  a  great  reform  from  mere  considerations  of 
justice  and  philanthropy,  and  was  not  likely  to  trust  a  confidant 
of  Bolingbroke.  He  was  civil  but  indifferent.  Swift,  however, 
was  introduced  by  his  friends  to  Mrs.  Howard,  the  mistress  of 
the  Prince  of  Wales,  soon  to  become  George  II.  The  Princess, 
afterwards  Queen  Caroline,  ordered  Swift  to  come  and  see  her, 
and  he  complied,  as  he  says,  after  nine  commands.  He  told  her 
that  she  had  lately  seen  a  wild  boy  from  Germany,  and  now  he 
supposed  she  wanted  to  see  a  wild  Dean  from  Ireland.  Some 
civilities  passed;  Swift  offered  some  plaids  of  Irish  manufacture, 
and  the  Princess  promised  some  medals  in  return.     When,  in 

>"On  the  words  Brother  Protestants,  &c." 


12  LESLIE  STEPHEN 

the  next  year,  George  I.  died,  the  Opposition  hoped  great  things 
from  the  change.  PuUeney  had  tried  to  get  Swift's  powerful 
help  for  the  Craftsman,  the  Opposition  organ;  and  the  Opposi- 
tion hoped  to  upset  Walpole.  Swift,  who  had  thought  of  going 
to  France  for  his  health,  asked  Mrs.  Howard's  advice.  She  recom- 
mended him  to  stay;  and  he  took  the  recommendation  as  amount- 
ing to  a  promise  of  support.  He  had  some  hopes  of  obtaining 
English  preferment  in  exchange  for  his  deanery  in  what  he  calls 
(in  the  date  to  one  of  his  letters  *)  "wretched  Dublin  in  miserable 
Ireland."  It  soon  appeared,  however,  that  the  mistress  w^as 
powerless ;  and  that  Walpole  was  to  be  as  firm  as  ever  in  his  seat. 
Swift  returned  to  Ireland,  never  again  to  leave  it:  to  lose  soon 
afterwards  his  beloved  Stella,  and  nurse  an  additional  grudge 
against  courts  and  favourites. 

The  bitterness  with  which  he  resented  Mrs.  Howard's  supposed 
faithlessness  is  painfully  illustrative,  in  truth,  of  the  morbid  state 
of  mind  which  was  growing  upon  him.  "You  think,"  he  says 
to  Bolingbroke  in  1729,  "as  I  ought  to  think,  that  it  is  time  for  me 
to  have  done  with  the  world;  and  so  I  would,  if  I  could  get  into 
a  better  before  I  was  called  into  the  best,  and  not  die  here  in  a 
rage,  like  a  poisoned  rat  in  a  hole."  That  terrible  phrase  ex- 
presses but  too  vividly  the  state  of  mind  which  was  now  becoming 
familiar  to  him.  Separated  by  death  and  absence  from  his  best 
friends,  and  tormented  by  increasing  illness,  he  looked  out  upon 
a  state  of  things  in  which  he  could  see  no  ground  for  hope.  The 
resistance  to  Wood's  halfpence  had  staved  off  immediate  ruin, 
but  had  not  cured  the  fundamental  evil.  Some  tracts  upon  Irish 
affairs,  written  after  the  Drapier^s  Letters,  sufficiently  indicate 
his  despairing  vein.  "I  am,"  he  says  in  1737,  when  proposing 
some  remedy  for  the  swarms  of  beggars  in  Dublin,  "a  desponder 
by  nature ; "  and  he  has  found  out  that  the  people  will  never  stir 
themselves  to  remove  a  single  grievance.  His  old  prejudices 
were  as  keen  as  ever,  and  could  dictate  personal  outbursts.  He 
attacked  the  bishops  bitterly  for  offering  certain  measures  which 
in  his  view  sacrificed  the  permanent  interests  of  the  Church  to 
that  of  the  actual  occupants.  He  showed  his  own  sincerity  by 
refusing  to  take  fines  for  leases  which  would  have  benefited  him- 
self at  the  expense  of  his  successors.  With  equal  earnestness 
he  still  clung  to  the  Test  Acts,  and  assailed  the  Protestant  Dis- 
senters with  all  his  old  bitterness,  and  ridiculed  their  claims  to 

'  To  Lord  Stafford,  November  26,   1725. 


WOOD'S  HALFPENCE  13 

brotherhood  with  Churchmen.  To  the  end  he  was  a  Churchman 
before  everything.  One  of  the  last  of  his  poetical  performances 
was  prompted  by  the  sanction  given  by  the  Irish  Parhament  to 
an  opposition  to  certain  "titles  of  ejectment."  He  had  defended 
the  right  of  the  Irish  Parliament  against  English  rulers;  but 
when  it  attacked  the  interests  of  his  Church  his  fury  showed  itself 
in  the  most  savage  satire  that  he  ever  wrote,  the  Legion  Club.  It 
is  an  explosion  of  wrath  tinged  with  madness :  — 

"Could  I  from  the  building's  top 
Hear  the  ratthng  thunder  drop, 
While  the  devil  upon  the  roof 
(If  the  devil  be  thunder-proof) 
Should  with  poker  fiery  red 
Crack  the  stones  and  melt  the  lead. 
Drive  them  down  on  every  skull 
When  the  den  of  thieves  is  full; 
Quite  destroy  the  harpies'  nest, 
How  might  this  our  isle  be  blest!" 

What  follows  fully  keeps  up  to  this  level.  Swift  flings  filth  like 
a  maniac,  plunges  into  ferocious  personalities,  and  ends  fitly  with 
the  execration  — 

"May  their  God,  the  devil,  confound  them!" 

He  was  seized  with  one  of  his  fits  whilst  writing  the  poem,  and  was 
never  afterwards  capable  of  sustained  composition. 

Some  further  pamphlets  —  especially  one  on  the  State  of  Ireland 
—  repeat  and  enforce  his  views.  One  of  them  requires  special 
mention.  The  Modest  Proposal  (written  in  1729)  for  Preventing 
the  Children  of  Poor  People  in  Ireland  from  being  a  Burden  to  their 
Parents  or  Country  —  the  proposal  being  that  they  should  be  turned 
into  articles  of  food  —  gives  the  very  essence  of  Swift's  feeling, 
and  is  one  of  the  most  tremendous  pieces  of  satire  in  existence.  It 
shows  the  quality  already  noticed.  Swift  is  burning  with  a  passion 
the  glow  of  which  makes  other  passions  look  cold,  as  it  is  said  that 
some  bright  lights  cause  other  illuminating  objects  to  cast  a  shadow. 
Yet  his  face  is  absolutely  grave,  and  he  details  his  plan  as  calmly  as 
a  modern  projector  suggesting  the  importation  of  Australian  meat. 
The  superficial  coolness  may  be  revolting  to  tender-hearted  people, 
and  has,  indeed,  led  to  condemnation  of  the  supposed  ferocity  of 
the  author  almost  as  surprising  as  the  criticisms  which  can  see 
in  it  nothing  but  an  exquisite  piece  of  humour.     It  is,  in  truth, 


14 


LESLIE  STEPHEN 


fearful  to  read  even  now.  Yet  we  can  forgive  and  even  sympathize 
when  we  take  it  for  what  it  really  is  —  the  most  complete  expression 
of  burning  indignation  against  intolerable  wrongs.  It  utters,  in- 
deed, a  serious  conviction.  "I  confess  myself,"  says  Swift  in  a 
remarkable  paper,^  "to  be  touched  with  a  very  sensible  pleasure 
when  I  hear  of  a  mortality  in  any  country  parish  or  village,  where 
the  wretches  are  forced  to  pay  for  a  filthy  cabin  and  two  ridges 
of  potatoes  treble  the  worth ;  brought  up  to  steal  and  beg  for  want 
of  work;  to  whom  death  would  be  the  best  thing  to  be  wished  for, 
on  account  both  of  themselves  and  the  public."  He  remarks  in 
the  same  place  on  the  lamentable  contradiction  presented  in  Ire- 
land to  the  maxim  that  the  "people  are  the  riches  of  a  nation," 
and  the  Modest  Proposal  is  the  fullest  comment  on  this  melancholy 
reflection.  After  many  visionary  proposals  he  has  at  last  hit  upon 
the  plan,  which  has  at  least  the  advantage  that  by  adopting  it  "we 
can  incur  no  danger  of  disobliging  England.  For  this  kind  of 
commodity  will  not  bear  exportation,  the  flesh  being  of  too  tender 
a  consistence  to  admit  a  long  continuance  in  salt,  although,  per- 
haps, I  could  name  a  country  which  would  be  glad  to  eat  up  a  whole 
nation  without  it." 

Swift  once  asked  Delany  ^  whether  the  "corruptions  and  villanies 
of  men  in  power  did  not  eat  his  flesh  and  exhaust  his  spirits?" 
"No,"  said  Delany.  "Why,  how  can  you  help  it?"  said  Swift. 
"Because,"  replied  Delany,  "I  am  commanded  to  the  contrary  — 
jret  not  thyselj  because  oj  the  ungodly. ^^  That,  like  other  wise  max- 
ims, is  capable  of  an  ambiguous  application.  As  Delany  took  it, 
Swift  might  perhaj)S  have  replied  that  it  was  a  very  comfortable 
maxim  —  for  the  ungodly.  His  own  application  of  Scripture  is 
different.  It  tells  us,  he  says,  in  his  proposal  for  using  Irish  manu- 
factures, that  "oppression  makes  a  wise  man  mad."  If,  therefore, 
some  men  are  not  mad,  it  must  be  because  they  are  not  wise.  In 
truth,  it  is  characteristic  of  Swift  that  he  could  never  learn  the  great 
lesson  of  submission  even  to  the  inevitable.  He  could  not,  like 
an  easy-going  Delany,  submit  to  oppression  which  might  possibly 
be  resisted  with  success;  but  as  little  could  he  submit  when  all 
resistance  was  hopeless.  His  rage,  which  could  find  no  better 
outlet,  burnt  inwardly  and  drove  him  mad.  It  is  very  interesting 
to  compare  Swift's  wrathful  denunciations  with  Berkeley's  treat- 
ment of  the  same  before  in  the  Querist  (i73S-'37)-     Berkeley  is 

>  Maxims  Contrrllei  in  Irclinl.  *  Delany,  p.  148. 


WOOD'S  HALFPENCE 


IS 


full  of  luminous  suggestions  upon  economical  questions  which  are 
entirely  beyond  Swift's  mark.  He  is  in  a  region  quite  above  the 
sophistries  of  the  Dra pier's  Letters.  He  sees  equally  the  terrible 
grievance  that  no  people  in  the  world  is  so  beggarly,  wretched, 
and  destitute  as  the  common  Irish.  But  he  thinks  all  complaints 
against  the  English  rule  useless,  and  therefore  foolish.  If  the  Eng- 
lish restrain  our  trade  ill-advisedly,  is  it  not,  he  asks,  plainly  our 
interest  to  accommodate  ourselves  to  them?  (No.  136.)  Have 
we  not  the  advantage  of  English  protection  without  sharing  Eng- 
lish responsibilities?  He  asks  "whether  England  doth  not  really 
love  us  and  wish  well  to  us  as  bone  of  her  bone  and  flesh  of  her 
flesh  ?  and  whether  it  be  not  our  part  to  cultivate  this  love  and 
affection  all  manner  of  ways?"  (Nos.  322,  323.)  One  can  fancy 
how  Swift  must  have  received  this  characteristic  suggestion  of  the 
admirable  Berkeley,  who  could  not  bring  himself  to  think  ill  of 
any  one.  Berkeley's  main  contention  is,  no  doubt,  sound  in  itself, 
namely,  that  the  welfare  of  the  country  really  depended  on  the 
industry  and  economy  of  its  inhabitants,  and  that  such  quahties 
would  have  made  the  Irish  comfortable  in  spite  of  all  English 
restrictions  and  Government  abuses.  But,  then,  Swift  might  well 
have  answered  that  such  general  maxims  are  idle.  It  is  all  very 
well  for  divines  to  tell  people  to  become  good,  and  to  find  out  that 
then  they  will  be  happy.  But  how  are  they  to  be  made  good? 
Are  the  Irish  intrinsically  worse  than  other  men,  or  is  their  laziness 
and  restlessness  due  to  special  and  removable  circumstances? 
In  the  latter  case  is  there  not  more  real  value  in  attacking  tangible 
evils  than  in  propounding  general  maxims  and  calling  upon  all  men 
to  submit  to  oppression,  and  even  to  believe  in  the  oppressor's 
good-will,  in  the  name  of  Christian  charity?  To  answer  those 
questions  would  be  to  plunge  into  interminable  and  hopeless  con- 
troversies. Meanwhile,  Swift's  fierce  indignation  against  English 
oppression  might  almost  as  well  have  been  directed  against  a  law 
of  nature  for  any  immediate  result.  Whether  the  rousing  of  the 
national  spirit  was  any  benefit  is  a  question  which  I  must  leave  to 
others.  In  any  case,  the  work,  however  darkened  by  personal 
feeling  or  love  of  class-privilege,  expressed  as  hearty  a  hatred  of 
oppression  as  ever  animated  a  human  being. 


II 


DAVID   MASSON 
(1822) 

DE  QUINCEY'S  writings  :    CLASSIFICATION  AND  REVIEW 

[Chapter  XII.  of  the  Life  of  De  Quincey  in  the  English  Men  of  Letters] 

How  are  De  Quincey's  writings  to  be  classified  ?  His  own  classi- 
fication, propounded  in  the  General  Preface  to  the  edition  of  his 
Collected  Works,  was  to  the  effect  that  they  might  be  distributed 
roughly  into  three  sorts,  —  first,  those  papers  of  fact  and  reminis- 
cence the  object  of  which  was  primarily  to  amuse  the  reader,  though 
they  might  reach  to  a  higher  interest,  e.g.  the  Autobiographic 
Sketches;  secondly,  essays  proper,  or  papers  addressing  themselves 
purely  or  primarily  to  "the  understanding  as  an  insulated  faculty," 
e.g.  The  Essenes,  The  Cccsars,  and  Cicero;  and,  thirdly,  that  "far 
higher  class  of  compositions"  which  might  be  considered  as  exam- 
ples of  a  very  rare  kind  of  "impassioned  prose,"  e.g.  large  portions 
of  The  Confessions  of  an  Opinm-Eater  and  the  supplementary 
Suspiria  de  Projiindis.  This  classification,  though  not  c[uite  the 
same  as  Bacon's  division  of  the  "parts  of  learning"  (by  which 
he  meant  "kinds  of  literature")  into  History  or  the  Literature 
of  Memory,  Philosophy  or  the  Literature  of  Reason,  and  Poetry 
or  the  Literature  of  Imagination,  is  practically  equivalent. 
Hence,  as  Bacon's  classification  is  the  more  scientific  and 
searching,  and  also  the  most  familiar  and  popular,  we  shall  be 
pretty  safe  in  adopting  it,  and  dividing  De  Quincey's  writings  into : 
—  (I.)  Writings  of  Reminiscence,  or  Descriptive,  Biographical, 
and  Historical  Writings;  (II.)  Speculative,  Didactic,  and  Critical 
Writings;  (HI.)  Imaginative  Writings  and  Prose-Poetry.  It  is 
necessary,  above  all  things,  to  premise  that  in  De  Quincey  the  three 
sorts  of  writing  shade  continually  into  each  other.     Where  this 

16 


DE  QUINCEY'S   WRITINGS  1 7 

difficulty  of  the  constant  blending  of  kinds  in  one  and  the  same 
paper  is  not  met  by  the  obvious  preponderance  of  one  of  the  kinds, 
it  may  be  obviated  by  naming  some  papers  in  more  divisions  than 
one.  With  that  understanding,  we  proceed  to  a  classified  synopsis 
of  De  Quincey's  literary  remains :  — 

I.      DESCRIPTIVE,  BIOGRAPHICAL,  AND  HISTORICAL 

The  writings  of  this  class  may  be  enumerated  and  subdivided 
as  follows :  — 

I.  Autobiographic  :  —  Specially  of  this  kind  are  The  Confessions  of  an 
English  O pium-Eater  and  the  Autobiographic  Sketches;  but  autobiographic 
matter  is  dispersed  through  other  papers. 

II.  Biographic  Sketches  of  Persons  known  to  the  Author:  — 
Some  such  are  included  in  the  autobiographic  writings;  but  distinct  papers 
of  the  kind  are  Recollections  of  the  Lake  Poets,  or  Sketches  of  Coleridge,  Words- 
worth, and  Southey,  and  the  articles  entitled  Coleridge  and  Opium-Eating, 
Charles  Lamb,  Professor  Wilson,  Sir  William  Hamilton,  Walking  Stewart, 
Note  on  Hazlitt,  and  Dr.  Parr,  or  Whiggism  in  its  Relations  to  Literature. 
All  these  papers  are  partly  critical.  Several  papers  of  the  same  sort  that 
appeared  in  magazines  have  not  been  reprinted  in  the  Collective  British 
Edition. 

III.  Other  Biographic  Sketches:  —  Shakespeare  (in  Vol.  XV.), 
Milton  (in  Vol.  X.),  Pope  (in  Vol.  XV.),  Richard  Bentley,  Percy  Bysshe Shelley, 
The  Marquis  Weliesley,  Last  Days  of  Immanuel  Kant  (a  digest  from  the  Ger- 
man), Lessing,  Herder,  Goethe  (in  Vol.  XY.),  Schiller.  These  also  include 
criticism  with  biography. 

IV.  Historical  Sketches  and  Descriptions  :  —  Homer  and  the 
Homeridce,  Philosophy  of  Herodotus,  Toilette  of  the  Hebrew  Lady  (archaeo- 
logical), The  Ccesars  (in  six  chapters,  forming  the  greater  part  of  Vol  IX.), 
Charlemagne,  Revolt  of  the  Tartars,  The  Revolution  of  Greece,  Moderti  Greece, 
Ceylon,  China  (a  little  essay  on  the  Chinese  character,  with  illustrations), 
Modern  Superstition,  Anecdotage,  French  and  English  Maimers,  Account  of 
the  Williams  Murders  (the  postscript  to  "  Murder  considered  as  one  of  the  Fine 
Arts").  In  the  same  sub-class  we  would  include  the  two  important  papers 
entitled  Rhetoric  and  Style;  for,  though  to  a  considerable  extent  critical  and 
didactic,  they  are,  despite  their  titles,  chiefly  surveys  of  Literary  History. 

V.  Historical  Speculations  and  Researches  :  —  In  this  class  may  be 
included  Cicero,  The  Casuistry  of  Roman  Meals,  Greece  under  the  Romans, 
Judas  Iscariot,  The  Essenes,  The  Pagan  Oracles,  Secret  Societies,  Historico- 
Critical  Inquiry  into  the  Origin  of  the  Rosicrucians  and  Freemasons,  .iElius 
Lamia. 

The  two  Autobiographic  volumes  and  the  volume  of  Reminis- 
cences of  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  and  Southey,  are  among  the 
best  known  of  De   Quincey's  writings.     Among  the  other  bio- 


1 8  DAVID   MASSON 

graphic  sketches  of  persons  known  to  him  Charles  Lamb,  Walking 
Stewart,  and  Dr.  Parr  are  those  of  the  highest  merit,  —  the  last 
very  severe  and  satirical,  hut  full  of  interest  and  of  marked  ability. 
Of  the  other  biographic  sketches  the  ablest  and  most  interesting 
by  far  is  Richard  Bentley,  a  really  splendid  specimen  of  biography 
in  miniature.  The  Encyclopiedia  article  on  Shakespeare,  though 
somewhat  thin,  deserves  notice  for  the  perfection  of  its  propor- 
tions as  a  summary  of  what  is  essential  in  our  information  respect- 
ing Shakespeare's  life.  It  is  not  yet  superannuated.  The  similar 
article  on  Pope  is  interesting  as  an  expression  of  De  Quincey's 
generous  admiration  all  in  all  of  a  poet  whom  he  treats  very  severely 
in  detail  in  some  of  his  critical  papers;  and  it  is  rare  to  meet  so  neat 
and  workmanlike  a  little  curiosity  as  the  paper  on  The  Marquis 
Wellesley.  Of  the  personal  sketches  of  eminent  Germans,  that 
entitled  The  Last  Days  of  Immannel  Kant,  though  it  is  only  a  trans- 
lated digest  from  a  German  original,  bears  the  palm  for  delicious 
richness  of  anecdote  and  vividness  of  portraiture.  De  Quincey's 
credit  in  it,  except  in  so  far  as  he  shaped  and  changed  and  infused 
life  while  translating  (which  was  a  practice  of  his),  rests  on  the  fact 
that  he  was  drawn  to  the  subject  by  his  powerful  interest  in  Kant's 
philosophy,  and  conceived  the  happy  idea  of  such  a  mode  of 
creating  among  his  countrymen  a  personal  affection  for  the  great 
abstract  thinker.  Some  of  the  other  German  sketches,  especially 
Lessing  and  Herder,  have  the  same  special  merit  of  being  early 
and  useful  attempts  to  introduce  some  knowledge  of  German 
thought  and  literature  into  England;  but  the  Goethe,  on  all  ac- 
counts, is  discreditable.  It  exhibits  De  Quincey  at  about  his  very 
worst;  for,  though  raising  the  estimate  of  Goethe's  genius  that 
had  been  announced  in  the  earlier  critical  paper  on  his  "Wilhelm 
Meister,"  it  retains  something  of  the  malice  of  that  paper. 

When  we  ])ass  to  the  papers  of  historical  description,  it  is 
hardly  a  surprise  to  find  that  it  is  De  Quincey's  tendency  in  such 
papers  to  run  to  disputed  or  momentous  "points"  and  concentrate 
the  attention  on  those.  A  magazine  paper  did  not  afford  breadth 
of  canvas  enough  for  complete  historical  representation  under 
such  titles  as  he  generally  chose.  No  exception  of  the  kind,  indeed, 
can  be  taken  to  his  Revolt  of  the  Tartars,  which  is  a  noble  effort 
of  historical  painting,  done  with  a  sweep  and  breadth  of  poetic 
imagination  entitling  it,  though  a  history,  to  rank  also  among  his 
prose-phantasies.  Nor  does  the  remark  apply  to  the  Account  of 
the  Williams  Murders,  which  beats  for  ghastly  power  anything  else 


DE  QUINCEY'S  WRITINGS  19 

known  in  Newgate  Calendar  literature.  But  the  tendency  to 
"points"  is  shown  in  most  of  the  other  papers  in  the  same  sub- 
class. Among  these  The  Philosophy  oj  Herodotus  may  be  men- 
tioned for  its  singularly  fine  appreciation  of  the  Grecian  father  of 
History,  and  Modern  Greece  for  its  amusing  and  humorous  in- 
structiveness.  Rhetoric  and  Style  are  among  De  Quincey's  greatest 
performances;  and,  though  in  them  too,  considered  as  sketches 
of  Literary  History,  the  strength  runs  towards  points  and  speciali- 
ties, the  titles  declare  that  beforehand  and  indicate  what  the 
specialities  are.  The  CcBsars  is,  undoubtedly,  his  most  ambitious 
attempt,  all  in  all,  in  the  historical  department;  and  he*set  great 
store  by  it  himself;  but  it  cannot,  I  think,  take  rank  among  his 
highest  productions.  There  are  striking  passages  and  suggestions 
in  it;  but  the  general  effect  is  too  hazy,  many  of  the  parts  are  hur- 
ried, and  none  of  the  characters  of  the  Emperors  stands  out  with 
convincing  distinctness  after  that  of  Julius  Cc-esar. 

Few  authors  are  so  difficult  to  represent  by  mere  extracts  as  De 
Quincey,  so  seldom  does  he  complete  a  matter  within  a  short  space. 
The  following,  however,  may  pass  as  specimens  of  him  in  the 
descriptive  and  historical  department.  The  second  is  excellent 
and  memorable :  — 

First  Sight  of  Dr.  Parr 

Nobody  announced  him;  and  we  were  left  to  collect  his  name  from  his 
dress  and  his  conversation.  Hence  it  happened  that  for  some  time  I  was 
disposed  to  question  with  myself  whether  this  might  not  be  Mr.  Bobus  even 
(little  as  it  could  be  supposed  to  resemble  him),  rather  than  Dr.  Parr,  so  much 
did  he  contradict  all  my  rational  preconceptions.  "A  man,"  said  I,  "who 
has  insulted  people  so  outrageously  ought  not  to  have  done  this  in  single  re- 
liance upon  his  professional  protections:  a  brave  man,  and  a  man  of  honour, 
would  here  have  carried  about  with  him,  in  his  manner  and  deportment, 
some  such  language  as  this,  — '  Do  not  think  that  I  shelter  myself  under  my 
gown  from  the  natural  consequences  of  the  affronts  I  offer :  mortal  combats 
I  am  forbidden,  sir,  as  a  Christian  minister,  to  engage  in;  but,  as  I  find  it 
impossible  to  refrain  from  occasional  license  of  tongue,  I  am  very  willing  to 
fight  a  few  rounds  in  a  ring  with  any  gentleman  who  fancies  himself  ill-used.'" 
Let  me  not  be  misunderstood;  I  do  not  contend  that  Dr.  Parr  should  often, 
or  regularly,  have  offered  this  species  of  satisfaction.  But  I  do  insist  upon  it, 
—  that  no  man  should  have  given  the  very  highest  sort  of  provocation  so  wan- 
tonly as  Dr.  Parr  is  recorded  to  have  done,  unless  conscious  that,  in  a  last 
e.xtremity,  he  was  ready,  like  a  brave  man,  to  undertake  a  short  turn-up,  in  a 
private  room,  with  any  person  whatsoever  whom  he  had  insulted  past  endur- 
ance. A  doctor  who  had  so  often  tempted  (which  is  a  kind  wav  of  saving 
had  merited)  a  cudgelling  ought  himself  to  have  had  some  ability  to  cudgel. 
Dr.  Johnson  assuredly  would  have  acted  on  that  principle.     Had  volume 


20  DAVID  MASSON 

the  second  of  that  same  folio  with  which  he  floored  Osburn  happened  to  lie 
ready  to  the  prostrate  man's  grasp,  nobody  can  suppose  that  Johnson  would 
have'  disputed  Osburn's  right  to  retaliate;   in  which  case  a  regular  succession 
of  rounds  would  have  been  established.     Considerations  such  as  these,  and 
Dr.  Parr's  undeniable  reputation  (granted  even  by  his  most  admiring  biog- 
raphers) as  a  sanguinary  flagellator  through  his  long  career  of  pedagogue, 
had  prepared  me,  —  nay,  entitled  me,  —  to  e.xpect  in  Dr.  Parr  a  huge  carcase 
of  a  man,  fourteen  stone  at  the  least.     Hence,  then,  my  surprise,  and  the  per- 
plexity I  have  recorded,  when  the  door  opened,  and  a  little  man,  in  a  most 
plebeian  wig,  .  .  .  cut  his  way  through  the  company,  and  made  for  a /a7</e«// 
standing  opposite  the  fire.     Into  this  he  hinged;  and  then  forthwith,  without 
preface  or  apology,  began  to  open  his  talk  upon  the  room.     Here  arose  a  new 
marvel,  and  a  greater.     If  I  had  been  scandalized  at  Dr.  Parr's  want  of  thews 
and  bulk,  conditions  so  indispensable  for  enacting  the  part  of  Sam  Johnson, 
much  more,  and  with  better  reason,  was  I  now  petrified  with  his  voice,  utter- 
ance, gestures,  demeanour.     Conceive,  reader,  by  way  of  counterpoise  to  the 
fine  classical  pronunciation  of  Dr.  Johnson,  an  infantine  lisp,  — ■  the  worst 
I  ever  heard,  —  from  the  lips  of  a  man  above  sixty,  and  accompanied  with  all 
sorts  of  ridiculous  grimaces  and  little  stage  gesticulations.     As  he  sat  in 
his  chair,  turning  alternately  to  the  right  and  to  the  left,  that  he  might  dis- 
tribute his  edification  in  equal  proportions  amongst  us,  he  seemed  the  very 
image  of  a  little  French  gossiping  abbe.     Yet  all  that  I  have  mentioned  was, 
and  seemed  to  be,  a  trifle  by  comparison  with  the  infinite  pettiness  of  his 
matter.     Nothing  did  he  utter  but  little  shreds  of  calumnious  tattle,  the  most 
ineffably  silly  and  frivolous  of  all  that  was  then  circulating  in  the  Whig  salons 
of  London  against  the  Regent.  ...     He  began  precisely  in  these  words: 
"  Oh  !  I  shall  tell  you  "  (laying  a  stress  upon  the  word  shall,  which  still  further 
aided  the  resemblance  to  a  Frenchman)  "a  sto-hee"   (lispingly  for  st()ry) 
"about  the  Pince  Wegent"  (such  was  his  nearest  approximation  to  Prince 
Regent).     "Oh,  the  Pince    Wegent !  — the    Pince   Wegent!  — what  a  sad 
Pince  Wegent !"     And  so  the  old  babbler  went  on,  sometimes  wringing  his 
hands  in  lamentation,  sometimes  flourishing  them  with  French  grimaces  and 
shrugs  of  shoulders,  sometimes  expanding  and  contracting  his  fingers  like  a 
fan.     After  an  hour's  twaddle  of  this  scandalous  description,  suddenly  he 
rose,  and  hopped  out  of  the  room,  exclaiming  all  the  way  "Oh,  what  a  Pince! 
—  Oh,  "what  a  Wegent!     Is  it  a  Wegent,  is  it  a  Pince,  that  you  call  this  man  ? 
Oh,  what  a  sad  Pince !     Did  anybody  ever  hear  of  such  a  sad  Pince  !  —  such  a 
sad  Wegent  —  such  a  sad,  sad  Pince  Wegent?     Oh,  what  a  Pince!''  &c., 
da  capo.     Not  without  indignation  did  I  exclaim  to  myself,  on  this  winding  up 
of  the  scene,  "And  so  this,  then,  this  lithping  slander-monger,  and  retailer  of 
gossip  fit  rather  for  washerwomen  over  their  tea  than  for  scholars  and  states- 
men, is  the  champion  whom  his  party  would  propound  as  the  adequate  antag- 
onist of  Samuel  Johnson  !     Faugh!"   .  .   .     Such  was  my  first  interview  with 
Dr.  Parr;   such  "its  issue.     And  now  let  me  explain  my  drift  in  thus  detailing 
its  circumstances.     Some  people  will  say  the  drift  was  doubtless  to  exhibit 
Dr.  Parr  in  a  disadvantageous  light,  —  as  a  p.Htv  gOssiper  and  a  man  of  mean 
personal  appearance.     No,  by  no  means.     Far  from  it.     I,  that  write  this 
paper,  have  myself  a  mean  personal  appearance;    and  I  love  men  of  mean 
appearance.  ...     Dr.  Parr,  therefore,  lost  nothing  in  7ny  esteem  by  showing 
a  meanish  exterior.     Yet  even  this  was  worth  mentioning,  and  had  a  value  in 
reference  to  my  present  purpose.     I  like  Dr.  Parr;    I  may  say  even  that  I 


DE   QUINCEY'S  WRITINGS  21 

love  him,  for  some  noble  qualities  of  heart  that  really  did  belong  to  him,  and 
were  continually  breaking  out  in  the  midst  of  his  singular  infirmities.  But  this, 
or  a  far  nobler  moral  character  than  Dr.  Parr's,  can  offer  no  excuse  for  giving 
a  false  elevation  to  his  intellectual  pretensions,  and  raising  him  to  a  level  which 
he  will  be  found  incapable  of  keeping  when  the  props  of  partial  friendship 
are  withdrawn.  —  Works,  V.  36-43. 

Summary  View  of  the  History  of  Greek  Literature 

There  were  two  groups  or  clusters  of  Grecian  wits,  two  deposits  or  stratifi- 
cations of  the  national  genius;  and  these  were  about  a  century  apart.  What 
makes  them  specially  rememberable  is  the  fact  that  each  of  these  brilliant 
clusters  had  gathered  separately  about  that  man  as  their  central  pivot  who 
even  apart  from  this  relation  to  the  literature,  was  otherwise  the  leading  spirit 
of  his  age.  .  .  .  Who  were  they?  The  one  was  Pericles,  the  other  was 
Alexander  of  Macedon.  E.xcept  Themistocles,  who  may  be  ranked 
as  senior  to  Pericles  by  one  generation  (or  thirty-three  years),  in  the  whole 
deduction  of  Grecian  annals  no  other  public  man,  statesman,  captain-general, 
administrator  of  the  national  resources,  can  be  mentioned  as  approaching  to 
these  two  men  in  splendour  of  reputation,  or  even  in  real  merit.  Pisistratus 
was  too  far  back ;  Alcibiades,  who  might  (chronologically  speaking)  have  been 
the  son  of  Pericles,  was  too  unsteady  and  (according  to  Mr.  Coleridge's 
coinage)  "unreliable,"  or  perhaps,  in  more  correct  English,  too  "tmrely- 
uponable."  Thus  far  our  purpose  prospers.  No  man  can  pretend  to  forget 
two  such  centres  as  Pericles  for  the  elder  group,  or  Alexander  of  Macedon 
(the  "strong  he-goat"  of  Jewish  prophecy)  for  the  junior.  Round  these  two 
foci,  in  two  different  but  adjacent  centuries,  gathered  the  total  starry  heavens, 
the  galaxy,  the  Pantheon  of  Grecian  intellect  .  .  .  That  we  may  still 
more  severely  search  the  relations  in  all  points  between  the  two  systems,  let 
us  assign  the  chronological  locus  of  each,  because  that  will  furnish  another 
element  towards  the  exact  distribution  of  the  chart  representing  the  motion 
and  the  oscillations  of  human  genius.  Pericles  had  a  very  long  adminis- 
tration. He  was  Prime  Minister  of  Athens  for  upwards  of  one  entire  genera- 
tion. He  died  in  the  year  429  before  Christ,  and  in  a  very  early  stage  of  that 
great  Peloponnesian  war  which  was  the  one  sole  intestine  war  for  Greece, 
affecting  every  nook  and  angle  in  the  land.  Now,  in  this  long  public  life  of 
Pericles,  we  are  at  liberty  to  fix  on  any  year  as  his  chronological  locus.  On 
good  reasons,  not  called  for  in  this  place,  we  fix  on  the  year  444  before 
Christ.  This  is  too  remarkable  to  be  forgotten.  Four,  Jour,  Jour,  what  in 
some  games  of  cards  is  called  a  " prial"  (we  presume,  by  an  elision  of  the  first 
vowel,  for  parial)  forms  an  era  which  no  man  can  forget.  It  was  the  fif- 
teenth year  before  the  death  of  Pericles,  and  not  far  from  the  bisecting  year 
of  his  political  life.  Now,  passing  to  the  other  system,  the  locus  of  Alexander 
is  quite  as  remarkable,  as  little  liable  to  be  forgotten  when  once  indicated, 
and  more  easily  determined,  because  selected  from  a  narrower  range  of  choice. 
The  exact  chronological  locus  of  Alexander  is  t,t,t,  years  before  Christ.  Every- 
body knows  how  brief  was  the  career  of  this  great  man :  it  terminated  in  the 
year  323  before  Christ.  But  the  annus  mirabilis  '  of  his  public  life,  the  most 
effective  and  productive  year  throughout  his  oriental  anabasis,  was  the  year 

*  [Year  of  marvels.] 


22  DAVID   MASSON 

;}^;^  before  Christ.  Here  we  have  another  "  prial,'^  a  prial  of  threes,  for  the 
locus  of  Alexander,  if  properly  corrected.  Thus  far  the  elements  are  settled, 
the  chronological  longitude  and  latitude  of  the  two  great  planetary  systems 
into  which  the  Greek  literature  breaks  up  and  distributes  itself:  444  and  t^t,^, 
are  the  two  central  years  for  the  two  systems;  allowing,  therefore,  an  inter- 
space of  III  years  between  the  joci  of  each.  .  .  .  Passing  onwards  from 
Pericles,  you  find  that  all  the  rest  in  his  system  were  men  in  the  highest 
sense  creative,  absolutely  setting  the  very  first  example,  each  in  his  particular 
walk  of  composition;  themselves  without  previous  models,  and  yet  destined 
everv  man  of  them  to  become  models  for  all  after-generations;  themselves 
without  fathers  or  mothers,  and  yet  having  all  posterity  for  their  children. 
First  come  the  three  men  divini  spiritus,^  under  a  heavenly  afflatus,  ^schy- 
lus,  Sophocles,  Euripides,  the  creators  of  Tragedy  out  of  a  village  mummery; 
next  comes  Aristophanes,  who  breathed  the  breath  of  life  into  Comedy; 
then  comes  the  great  philosopher,  Anaxagoras,  who  first  theorized  success- 
fully on  man  and  the  world.  Next  come,  whether  great  or  not,  the  still  more 
famous  philosophers,  Socrates,  Plato,  Xenophon;  then  comes,  leaning  upon 
Pericles,  as  sometimes  Pericles  leaned  upon  him,  the  divine  artist,  Phidias; 
and  behind  this  immortal  man  walk  Herodotus  and  Thucydides.  What  a 
procession  to  Eleusis  would  these  men  have  formed  !  what  a  frieze,  if  some 
great  artist  could  arrange  it  as  dramatically  as  Chaucer  has  arranged  the 
Pilgrimage  to  Canterbury !  .  .  .  Now,  let  us  step  on  a  hundred  years  for- 
ward. We  are  now  within  hail  of  Alexander,  and  a  brilliant  consistory  of 
Grecian  men  that  is  by  which  he  is  surrounded.  There  are  now  exquisite 
masters  of  the  more  refined  comedy;  there  are,  again,  great  philosophers,  for 
all  the  great  schools  are  represented  by  able  successors;  and,  above  all  others, 
there  is  the  one  philosopher  who  played  with  men's  minds  (according  to 
Lord  Bacon's  comparison)  as  freely  as  ever  his  princely  pupil  with  their 
persons,  —  there  is  Ar  stotle.  There  are  great  orators;  and,  above  all 
others,  there  is  that  orator  whom  succeeding  generations  (wisely  or  not)  have 
adopted  as  the  representative  name  for  what  is  conceivable  as  oratorical  per- 
fection, —  there  is  Demosthenes.  Aristotle  and  Demosthenes  are  in  them- 
selves bulwarks  of  power;  many  hosts  lie  in  those  two  names.  For  artists, 
again,  to  range  against  Phidias,  there  is  Lysippus  the  sculptor,  and  there  is 
Apelles  the  painter;  for  great  captains  and  masters  of  strategic  art,  there  is 
Alexander  himself,  with  a  glittering  cortci^e  of  general  officers,  well  qualified 
to  wear  the  crowns  which  they  will  win,  and  to  head  the  dynasties  which  they 
will  found.  Historians  there  are  now,  as  in  that  former  age;  and,  upon  the 
whole,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  "turnout"  is  showy  and  imposing.  .  .  . 
Before  comparing  the  second  "deposit"  (geologically  speaking)  of  Grecian 
genius  with  the  first,  let  us  consider  what  it  was  (if  anything)  that  connected 
them.  Here,  reader,  we  would  wish  to  put  a  question.  Saving  your  pres- 
ence. Did  you  ever  see  what  is  called  a  dumb-bell?  We  have;  and  know  it 
by  more  painful  evidence  than  that  of  sight.  You,  therefore,  O  reader! 
if  personally  cognizant  of  dumb-bells,  we  will  remind,  if  not,  we  will  inform, 
that  it  is  a  cylindrical  bar  of  iron  or  lead,  issuing  at  each  end  in  a  globe  of 
the  same  metal,  and  usually  it  is  sheathed  in  green  baize.  .  .  .  Now, 
reader,  it  is  under  this  image  of  the  dumb-bell  that  we  couch  our  allegory. 
Those  globes  at  each  end  are  the  two  systems  or  separate  clusters  of  Greek 

'  [Of  godlike  mind.  ] 


DE  QUINCEY'S  WRITINGS  23 

literature;  and  that  cylinder  which  connects  them  is  the  long  man  that  ran 
into  each  system,  binding  the  two  together.  Who  was  that  ?  It  was  Isocrates. 
Great  we  cannot  call  him  in  conscience;  and  therefore,  by  way  of  compromise, 
we  call  him  long,  which,  in  one  sense,  he  certainly  was;  for  he  lived  through 
four-and-twenty  Olympiads,  each  containing  four  solar  years.  He  narrowly 
escaped  being  a  hundred  years  old;  and,  though  that  did  not  carry  him  from 
centre  to  centre,  yet,  as  each  system  might  be  supposed  to  protend  a  radius 
each  way  of  twenty  years,  he  had,  in  fact,  a  full  personal  cognizance  (and 
pretty  equally)  of  the  two  systems,  remote  as  they  were,  which  composed 
the  total  world  of  Grecian  genius.  .  .  .  Now  then,  reader,  you  have  ar- 
rived at  that  station  from  which  you  overlook  the  whole  of  Greek  literature, 
as  a  few  explanations  will  soon  convince  you.  Where  is  Homer?  where  is 
Hesiod?  you  ask;  where  is  Pindar?  Homer  and  Hesiod  lived  1000  years 
B.C.,  or,  by  the  lowest  computation,  near  900.  For  anything  that  we  know, 
thev  may  have  lived  with  Tubal  Cain.  At  all  events,  they  belong  to  no  power 
or  agency  that  set  in  motion  the  age  of  Pericles,  or  that  operated  on  that  age. 
Pindar,  again,  was  a  solitary  emanation  of  some  unknown  influences,  at 
Thebes,  more  than  five  hundred  years  before  Christ.  He  may  be  referred 
to  the  same  age  as  Pythagoras.  These  are  all  that  can  be  cited  before  Pericles. 
Next,  for  the  ages  after  Alexander,  it  is  certain  that  Greece  Proper  was  so 
much  broken  in  spirit  by  the  loss  of  her  autonomy,  dating  from  that  era,  as 
never  again  to  have  rallied  sufficiently  to  produce  a  single  man  of  genius,  — 
not  one  solitary  writer  who  acted  as  a  power  upon  the  national  mind.  Calli- 
machus  was  nobody,  and  not  decidedly  Grecian.  Theocritus,  a  man  of  real 
genius  in  a  limited  way,  is  a  Grecian  in  that  sense  only  according  to  which  an 
Anglo-American  is  an  Englishman.  Besides  that,  one  swallow  does  not  make 
a  summer.  Of  any  other  writers,  above  all  others  of  Menander,  apparently 
a  man  of  divine  genius,  we  possess  only  a  few  wrecks;  and  of  Anacreon,  who 
must  have  been  a  poet  of  original  power,  we  do  not  certainly  know  that  we 
have  even  any  wrecks.  Of  those  which  pass  under  his  name  not  merely  the 
authorship,  but  the  era,  is  very  questionable  indeed.  Plutarch  and  Lucian, 
the  unlearned  reader  must  understand,  both  belong  to  post-Christian  ages. 
And,  for  all  the  Greek  emigrants  who  may  have  written  histories,  such  as  we 
now  value  for  their  matter  more  than  for  their  execution,  one  and  all,  they 
belong  too  much  to  Roman  civilization  that  we  should  ever  think  of  connecting 
them  with  native  Greek  literature.  Polybius  in  the  days  of  the  second  Scipio, 
Dion  Cassius  and  Appian  in  the  acme  of  Roman  civility,  are  no  more  Gre- 
cian authors  because  they  wrote  in  Greek  than  the  Emperors  Marcus  Antoninus 
and  Julian  were  other  than  Romans  because,  from  monstrous  coxcombry, 
they  chose  to  write  in  Greek  their  barren  memoranda.  —  Works,  X.  242-255. 

It  would  be  hopeless  to  seek  to  represent  by  extracts,  even  in  this 
inadequate  fashion,  that  very  characteristic  portion  of  De  Quincey's 
writings  of  the  generally  historical  kind  which  we  have  called  his 
Historical  Speculations  and  Researches.  They  must  be  read  in 
their  integrity.  The  Casuistry  of  Roman  Meals,  Cicero,  Judas 
Iscariot,  The  Essenes,  and  The  Pagan  Oracles,  may  be  especially 
recommended.  They  are  admirable  specimens  of  his  boldness 
and  acuteness  in  questioning  received  historical  beliefs,  and  of  his 


24  DAVID   MASSON 

ingenuity  in  working  out  novelties  or  paradoxes.  The  drift  of 
The  Casuistry  of  Roman  Meals  is  that  the  Romans,  and  indeed 
the  ancients  generally,  had  no  such  regular  meal  early  in  the  day 
as  our  modern  breakfast,  and  that  a  whole  coil  of  important  social 
consequences  depended  on  that  one  fact.  In  his  Cicero  he  pro- 
pounds a  view  of  his  own  as  to  the  character  of  the  famous  Roman 
orator  and  wit  and  his  function  in  the  struggle  between  Cssar  and 
Pompey.  The  paradox  in  Judas  Iscariot  is  that  Judas  was  not  the 
vulgar  traitor  of  the  popular  conception,  but  a  headstrong  fanatic, 
who,  having  missed  the  true  spiritual  purport  of  Christ's  mission, 
and  attached  himself  to  Christ  in  the  expectation  of  a  political 
revolution  to  be  effected  by  Christ's  assumption  of  a  temporal 
kingship  or  championship  of  the  Jewish  race,  had  determined 
to  precipitate  matters  by  leaving  Christ  no  room  for  hesitation  or 
delay.  In  The  Essenes  the  attempt  is  to  show  that  there  was  no 
real  or  independent  sect  of  that  name  among  the  Jews,  all  the  con- 
fusion to  the  contrary  having  originated  in  a  rascally  invention 
of  the  historian  Josephus.  In  The  Pagan  Oracles  there  is  a  contra- 
diction of  the  tradition  of  a  sudden  paralysis  of  the  Pagan  ritual 
on  the  first  appearance  of  Christianity,  and  a  castigation  of  the 
early  Christian  writers  for  having  invented  the  pious  lie. 

II.    SPECULATIVE,    DIDACTIC,   AND   CRITICAL 

While  a  speculative  and  critical  element  is  discernible  in  almost 
all  the  papers  now  dismissed  as  in  the  main  biographical  or  his- 
torical, and  while  some  of  the  historical  papers  were  regarded  by 
De  Quincey  himself  as  typical  examples  of  the  speculative  essay, 
it  is  of  a  different  set  of  his  papers  that  our  classification  obliges 
us  to  take  account  under  the  present  heading.  They  also  fall  into 
subdivisions :  — 

I.  Metaphysical,  Psychological,  and  Ethical:  —  In  this  subdivi- 
sion, itself  composite,  but  answering  to  what  passes  under  the  name  of  Phi- 
losophy in  a  general  sense,  may  be  included  the  following:  —  System  of  the 
Heavens  as  revealed  by  Lord  Rosse's  Telescopes ;  various  papers  or  portions 
of  papers  relating  to  Kant,  e.g.  part  of  the  Letters  to  a  Young  Man  whose 
Education  has  been  neglected,  the  paper  entitled  Kant  in  his  Miscellaneous 
Essays,  and  the  translation  of  Kant's  Llea  oj  a  Universal  History  on  a  Cos- 
mopoliticiil  Plan;  the  scraps  entitled  Dreaming  and  The  Palimpsest  oj  the 
Human  Brain,  in  the  "Sequel  to  the  Confessions  of  an  English  Opium- I-^ater  " 
(Vol.  XVI.);  some  of  the  scraps  in  the  "Notes  from  the  Pocket-Book  of  a 
Late    Opium-Eater,"  e.g.   On  Suicide;    and   the   articles   entitled   Platans 


DE  QUINCEY'S  WRITINGS  25 

Republic,  Glance  at  the  Works  of  Machintosh,  Casuistry,  On  War,  National 
Temperance  Movements,  Presence  of  Mind,  and  The  Juggernaut  of  Social  Life. 

II.  Theological:  —  Protestantism,  Miracles  as  Subjects  of  Testimony, 
On  Christianity  as  an  Organ  of  Political  Movement,  and  Memorial  Chro- 
nology on  a  new  and  more  apprehensible  system.  This  last,  included  in  Vol 
XVI.,  is  an  unfinished  paper,  posthumously  published  from  the  author's 
manuscript;  and  it  contains  little  more  than  a  clever  and  humorous  intro- 
duction, in  the  form  of  an  address  to  a  young  lady,  with  the  beginning  of  what 
was  intended  to  be  a  piece  of  Biblical  Criticism. 

III.  English  Politics:  —  A  Torys  Account  of  Toryism,  Whiggism, 
and  Radicalism;  O71  the  Political  Parties  of  Modern  England;  Falsifica- 
tion of  English  History. 

IV.  Political  Economy:  —  Logic  of  Political  Economy;  Dialogues  of 
Three  Templars  on  Political  Economy;  the  scraps  entitled  Malthus  and 
Measure  of  Value  in  the  "Notes  from  the  Pocket-Book  of  a  Late  Opium- 
Eater";    and  the  article  entitled  California. 

V.  Literary  Theory  and  Criticism  :  —  The  large  essays  entitled 
Rhetoric  and  Style  may  be  here  noted  again;  and  there  may  be  associated 
with  them,  as  expositions  of  general  literary  theory,  the  Letters  to  a  Young 
Man  whose  Education  has  been  neglected,  and  the  article  entitled  Language 
(which,  despite  the  title,  is  really  on  Style).  The  more  special  articles  of  the 
same  sort  form  a  numerous  series.  Arranged  in  the  chronological  order  of 
their  subjects,  they  are  as  follows:  —  Theory  of  Greek  Tragedy,  The  Antigone 
of  Sophocles,  and  The  Theban  Sphinx;  On  the  Knocking  at  the  Gate  in  Mac- 
beth; the  short  critical  paper  entitled  Milton  (in  Vol.  VI.),  and  the  other  en- 
titled Milton  versus  Southey  and  Landor  (in  Vol.  XL);  the  review  entitled 
Schlosser's  Literary  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century;  the  two  critical  ar- 
ticles on  Pope,  entitled  Alexander  Pope  (in  Vol.  VIII.)  and  Lord  Carlisle  on 
Pope  (in  Vol.  XII.);  the  article  Oliver  Goldsmith  (slightly  biographical,  but 
chiefly  critical) ;  the  paper  on  Carlyle's  Translation  of  Wilhelm  Meister,  re- 
printed under  the  title  Goethe  Reflected  in  his  Novel  of  Wilhelm  Meister,  with 
omission  of  the  remarks  on  the  translator  (in  Vol.  XII.) ;  the  sketch  Johyi 
Paul  Frederick  Richter,  prefixed  to  the  translated  "Analects  from  Richter" 
(in  Vol.  XIII.);  the  essay  On  Wordsworth's  Poetry;  the  Notes  on  Godwin 
and  Foster,  the  slight  little  paper  entitled  John  Keats,  and  the  Notes  on 
Walter  Savage  Landor.  To  these  may  be  added  Orthographic  Mutineers, 
The  .irt  of  Conversation,  the  scrap  Walladmor,  and  one  or  two  of  the  scraps 
called  "Notes  from  the  Pocket-Book  of  a  Late  Opium-Eater." 

To  the  harder  varieties  of  speculative  Philosophy,  it  will  be 
observed,  De  Quincey  has  contributed  less  of  an  original  kind  than 
might  have  been  expected  from  his  known  private  passion  for  meta- 
physical studies.  If  we  except  his  System  of  the  Heavens,  which 
hints  metaphysical  ideas  in  the  form  of  a  splendid  cosmological 
vision,  and  his  Palimpsest  oj  the  Human  Brain,  which  is  full  of 
psychological  suggestion,  he  seems  to  have  satisfied  himself  in  this 
department  by  reports  from  Kant  and  recommendations  of  Kant  to 
English  attention.  The  accuracy  of  some  of  his  statements  about 
Kant,  and  indeed  of  his  knowledge  of  Kant,  has  been  called  in 


26  DAVID  MASSON 

question  of  late ;  but  it  remains  to  his  credit  that,  in  a  singularly 
bleak  and  vapid  period  of  the  native  British  philosophizing,  he  had 
contracted  such  an  admiration,  all  in  all,  for  the  great  German 
transcendentalist.  His  translation  of  Kant's  Idea  oj  a  Universal 
History  was  a  feat  in  itself.  That  essay  remains  to  this  day  the 
clearest  argument  for  the  possibility  of  a  Science  of  History  since 
Vico  propounded  the  Scienza  Niiova;  and  to  have  perceived  the 
importance  of  such  an  essay  in  the  year  1824  was  to  be  in  possession 
of  a  philosophical  notion  of  great  value  long  before  it  was  popular 
in  Britain.  That  De  Quincey  contented  himself  so  much  with  mere 
accounts  of  Kant  personally,  and  literary  glimpses  of  the  nature  of 
his  speculations,  may  have  been  due  to  the  fact  that  original  phi- 
losophizing of  the  metaphysical  and  psychological  kinds  was  not 
wanted  in  magazines  and  would  not  pay.  He  made  amends,  how- 
ever, as  our  list  will  have  shown,  by  a  considerable  quantity  of 
writing  on  subjects  of  Speculative  Ethics.  His  best  essay  of  this 
kind  is  that  entitled  Casuistry.  It  was  a  favourite  idea  of  De  Quin- 
cey's  that  Moral  Philosophy  in  recent  times,  especially  in  Protes- 
tant countries,  has  run  too  much  upon  generalities,  avoiding  too 
much  those  very  cases  of  constant  recurrence  in  life  about  which 
difficulties  are  likely  to  arise  in  practical  conduct.  Accordingly, 
in  this  essay,  there  is  a  discussion  of  duelling  and  the  laws  of 
honour,  the  legitimacy  of  suicide,  proper  behaviour  to  servants,  the 
limits  of  the  rule  of  veracity,  &c.,  &c.,  all  with  lively  historical  illus- 
trations. In  the  paper  On  War  the  necessary  permanence  of  that 
agency  in  the  world  is  asserted  strongly,  and  a  certain  character  of 
nobleness  and  beneficence  claimed  for  it.  There  is  less  of  dissent 
from  current  philanthropy  in  the  article  on  Temperance  Move- 
ments; but  it  will  not  give  entire  satisfaction.  The  article  on 
Plato's  Republic  is  a  virulent  attack  upon  a  philosopher  towards 
whom  we  should  have  expected  to  see  De  Quincey  standing  in  an 
attitude  of  discipleship  and  veneration.  This  is  owing  chiefly 
to  De  Quincey's  disgust  with  the  moral  heresies,  in  the  matter  of 
marriage  and  the  like,  on  which  Plato  so  coolly  professes  to  found 
his  imaginary  commonwealth;  and  it  is  possible  that,  had  he  been 
treating  Plato  in  respect  of  the  sum-total  of  his  philosophic  and 
literary  merits,  we  should  have  had  a  much  more  admiring  estimate. 
As  it  is,  one  has  to  pity  De  Quincey  rather  than  Plato  in  this  unfor- 
tunate interview.  He  looks  as  petulant  and  small  in  his  attack 
on  Plato  as  he  did  in  his  attack  on  Goethe. 

The  expressly  theological  papers  of  De  Quincey,  with  passages 


DE  QUINCEY'S  WRITINGS  2 J 

innumerable  through  his  other  writings,  show  that  he  took  his 
stand  on  established  Christian  orthodoxy.  He  avowed  his  belief 
in  a  miraculous  revelation  from  God  to  mankind,  begun  and 
continued  in  the  history  of  the  Jewish  race,  and  consummated 
in  the  life  of  Christ  and  in  the  diffusion  of  Christianity  by  the 
Apostles.  As  a  reasoned  piece  of  Christian  apologetics  his  answer 
to  Hume's  argument,  entitled  Miracles  as  Subjects  of  Testimony, 
does  not  seem  to  have  won  much  regard  from  theologians,  and, 
'though  very  subtle,  is  certainly  deficient  in  the  homely  quality 
which  Hobbes  called  bite.  His  own  religious  faith,  indeed,  appears 
to  have  been  very  much  of  the  nature  of  an  inherited  sentiment, 
independent  of  reasoning,  and  which  he  would  not  let  reasoning 
disturb.  In  one  respect,  too,  his  theology  was  of  what  many 
theologians  now  would  call  a  narrow  and  old-fashioned  kind. 
There  is  no  trace  in  him  of  that  notion  of  a  universal  religious 
inspiration  among  the  nations,  and  so  of  a  certain  respectability, 
greater  or  less,  in  all  mythologies,  which  has  been  fostered  by 
the  modern  science  of  religions.  On  the  contrary,  Christianity 
is  with  him  the  single  divine  revelation  in  the  world,  and  he  thinks 
and  speaks  of  the  Pagan  religions,  in  the  style  of  the  old-fashioned 
theology,  as  simply  false  religions,  horrid  religions,  inventions 
of  the  spirit  of  evil.  How  this  is  to  be  reconciled  with  his  wide 
range  of  historical  sympathy,  and  especially  with  his  admiration 
of  the  achievements  of  the  Greek  intellect  and  the  grandeur  of 
the  Roman  character,  it  might  be  difficult  to  say.  Probably  it 
was  because  he  distinguished  between  those  noble  and  admirable 
developments  which  human  nature  could  work  out  for  itself, 
and  which  therefore  belong  to  humanity  as  such,  and  the  more 
rare  and  spiritual  possibilities  which  he  believed  actual  revelation 
had  woven  into  the  web  of  humanity,  and  which  were  to  be  re- 
garded as  gifts  from  the  supernatural.  At  all  events,  the  matter 
stands  as  has  been  stated.  In  the  same  way,  Mahometanism 
figures  in  his  regard  as  of  little  worth,  monotheistic  certainly  and 
therefore  superior  to  the  Pagan  creeds,  but  a  spurious  religion  and 
partly  stolen.  Further,  De  Quincey's  Christianity  declares  itself 
as  deliberately  of  the  Protestant  species.  With  much  respect 
for  Roman  Catholicism,  he  yet  repudiates  it  as  in  great  measure 
a  corruption  of  the  original  system,  which  original  system  he  finds 
reproduced  in  the  Protestantism  of  the  sixteenth  century.  His 
article  entitled  Protestantism  is  an  exposition  of  his  views  in  that 
matter,  and  is  altogether  a  very  able  and  important  paper.     If 


28  DAVID  MASSON 

he  has  seemed  narrow  hitherto  in  his  philosophy  of  religion,  here, 
once  within  the  bounds  of  his  Protestantism,  and  engaged  in 
defining  Protestantism,  he  becomes  broad  enough.  "The  self- 
sufficingness  of  the  Bible  and  the  right  of  private  judgment"  are, 
he  maintains,  "the  two  great  characters  in  which  Protestantism 
commences,"  and  the  doctrines  by  which  it  distinguishes  itself 
from  the  Church  of  Rome.  Bound  up  in  these  cloctrines,  he 
maintains,  is  the  duty  of  absolute  religious  toleration;  and  by 
this  principle  of  absolute  religious  toleration,  the  right  of  the 
individual  to  think,  print,  and  publish  what  he  pleases,  he  abides 
with  exemplary  fidelity  through  all  his  writings,  even  while  in 
skirmish  with  the  free-thinkers  for  whom  he  has  the  strongest 
personal  disgust.  But  this  is  not  all.  He  abjures  Bibliolatry,  or 
that  kind  of  respect  for  the  letter  of  the  Bible  which  is  founded 
on  the  notion  of  verbal  inspiration,  denying  it  to  be  a  necessary 
tenet  of  Protestantism,  or  to  be  possible  indeed  for  any  scholarly 
understanding.  It  is  not  only,  he  maintains,  that  the  notion  of 
literal  or  verbal  inspiration  is  broken  down  at  once  by  recollection 
of  the  corruptions  of  the  original  text  of  the  Scriptures,  their 
various  readings,  and  the  fact  that  it  is  only  in  translations  that 
the  Scriptures  exist  for  the  masses  of  mankind  in  all  countries. 
He  addresses  himself  more  emphatically  to  the  alleged  palpable 
errors  in  the  substance  and  teachings  of  the  Bible,  its  violations 
of  history  and  chronology,  its  inconsistencies  with  modern  science. 
Here  he  refuses  at  once  that  method  of  reconciling  science  with 
Scripture  which  proceeds  by  torture  of  texts  into  meanings  differ- 
ent from  those  which  they  bore  to  the  Hebrews  or  the  Greeks  who 
first  read  them.  His  bold  principle  is  that  Science  and  the  Bible 
cannot  be  reconciled  in  such  matters,  and  that  the  desire  to  recon- 
cile them  indicates  a  most  gross  and  carnal  misconception  of  the 
very  idea  of  a  divine  revelation.  The  principle  may  be  given  in 
his  own  words :  — 

It  is  an  obligation  resting  upon  the  Bible,  if  it  is  to  be  consistent  with  itself, 
that  it  should  refuse  to  teach  science;  and,  if  the  Bible  ever  had  taught  any 
one  art,  science,  or  process  of  life,  it  would  have  been  asked,  Is  a  divine  mission 
abandoned  suddenly  for  a  human  mission  ?  By  what  caprice  is  this  one 
science  taught,  and  others  not  ?  Or  these  two,  suppose,  and  not  all  ?  But 
an  objection  even  deadlier  would  have  followed.  It  is  clear  as  is  the  purpose 
of  daylight  that  the  whole  body  of  the  arts  and  sciences  comprises  one  vast 
machinery  for  the  irritation  and  development  of  the  human  intellect.  For 
this  end  they  exist.  To  see  God,  therefore,  descending  into  the  arena  of 
science,  and  contending,  as  it  were,  for  his  own  prizes,  by  teaching  science 


DE  QUINCEY'S  WRITINGS  29 

in  the  Bible,  would  be  to  see  him  intercepting  from  their  self-evident  destina- 
tion (viz.,  man's  intellectual  benefit)  his  own  problems  by  solving  them  him- 
self. No  spectacle  could  more  dishonour  the  divine  idea,  could  more  injure 
man  under  the  mask  of  aiding  him.  The  Bible  must  not  teach  anything  that 
man  can  teach  himself. 

The  revelation  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  is  to  be  regarded, 
then,  according  to  De  Quincey,  as  a  leaven  of  truths  purely  moral 
and  spiritual,  sent  into  the  world  by  miracle  precisely  because 
man  could  never  have  found  them  out  for  himself,  with  a  careful 
abstinence  from  any  mixture  of  matter  of  ordinary  knowledge 
in  advance  of  what  was  already  existent,  and  therefore  with  an 
adoption  of  all  existing  historical  and  scientific  phrases  and  tradi- 
tions.    Hence  Bibliolatry,  in  the  sense  of  a  belief  in  the  immacu- 
late correctness  of  the  language  and  statements  of  the  Bible  on 
all  subjects  whatsoever,  was  no  tenet  of  genuine  Christianity, 
secure  as  every  Christian  ought  to  be  that,  whatever  changes  of 
conception  on  such  subjects  as  the  antiquity  of  the  human  race, 
or  the  system  of  the  physical  universe,  might  come  with  the  progress 
of  the  human  intelligence,  the  supernatural  leaven  would  impreg- 
nate them  as  they  came,  and  go  on  working.     In  this  doctrine, 
of  which  De  Quincey  seems  to  have  meditated  a  particular  appli- 
cation in  his  unfinished  papers  entitled  ''Memorial  Chronology," 
he  was  substantially  at  one  with  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth.     He 
was  at  one  with  them,  too,  in  his  affection  for  Church-Establish- 
ments.    In    remarkable    difference    from    his    favourite    Milton, 
who  regarded  the  incorporation  of  Church  and  State  as  the  cause 
of  the  vitiation  of  the  supernatural  leaven  in  the  world,  and  scowled 
back  with  hatred  on  the  Emperor  Constantine  as  the  beginner 
of  that  mischief,  De  Quincey  confessed  to  a  special  kindness  for 
Constantine,  precisely  because  that  Emperor  had  conceived  the 
idea  of  converting  Christianity  into  a  political  agency.     It  was 
Constantine  who  had  carried  Christian  teaching  into  effect  in 
such  institutions  as  hospitals  and  public  provision  for  the  poor; 
and  the  prospects  of  the  world  for  the  future  were  bound  up  with 
the  possible  extensions  of  the  political  influence  of  Christianity  in 
similar  directions.     That  is  the  subject  of  the  essay  entitled  On 
Christianity  as  an  Organ  of  Political  Movement.     In  short,  De 
Quincey  is  to  be  remembered,  in  his  rehgious  relations,  as  a 
staunch  Church-of-England  man  of  the  broad  school,  not  given 
to  High-Church  sacerdotalism,  though  with  an  aesthetic  liking  in 
his  own  case  for  a  comely  ritual. 


30  DAVID    MASSON 

In  politics  De  Quincey  was  an  English  Tory.  In  the  two  papers 
entitled  .4  Tory's  Account  of  Toryism,  IVhiggism,  and  Radicalism, 
and  On  the  Political  Parties  of  Modern  England,  he  avows  his 
partisanship.  Toryism  asserts  itself  also  in  the  article  on  Dr. 
Parr,  and  tinges  some  of  the  other  papers.  It  is  interesting, 
indeed,  to  observe  how  much  of  the  "John  Bull  element,"  as 
Mr.  Page  calls  it,  there  was,  all  in  all,  in  the  feeble  little  man. 
His  patriotism  was  of  the  old  type  of  the  days  of  Pitt  and  Nelson. 
He  exulted  in  the  historic  glories  of  England  and  her  imperial 
ascendency  in  so  many  parts  of  the  globe,  and  would  have  had 
her  do  battle  for  any  punctilio  of  honour,  as  readily  as  for  any 
more  visible  interest,  in  her  dealings  with  foreigners.  He  had 
a  good  deal  of  the  old  English  anti-Gallican  prejudice;  and, 
though  he  has  done  justice,  over  and  over  again,  to  some  of  the 
finer  characteristics  of  the  French,  the  total  effect  of  his  remarks 
on  the  French,  politically  and  intellectually,  is  irritating  to  the 
admirers  of  that  great  nation.  He  knew  them  only  through  books 
or  by  casual  observation  of  stray  Frenchmen  he  met ;  for  he  was 
never  out  of  the  British  Islands,  and  never  experienced  that  sudden 
awakening  of  a  positive  affection  for  the  French  which  comes 
infallibly  from  even  a  single  visit  to  their  lightsome  capital.  On 
the  other  hand,  though  Scotland  was  his  home  for  so  large  a  part 
of  his  life,  he  seems  never  to  have  contracted  the  least  sympathy 
with  anything  distinctively  Scottish.  Even  his  Toryism  was 
specially  English  or  South-British.  But,  like  all  other  parts  of 
his  creed,  his  Toryism  was  of  a  highly  intellectual  kind,  with 
features  of  its  own.  In  such  questions,  for  example,  as  that  of 
the  continuance  of  flogging  and  other  brutal  forms  of  punishment 
in  the  army  and  navy  and  elsewhere,  he  parted  company  with 
the  ordinary  mass  of  Tories,  leaving  his  curse  with  them  in  that 
particular,  and  went  with  the  current  of  Radical  sentiment  and 
opinion.  How  far  he  was  carried,  by  his  candour  of  intellect  and 
depth  and  accuracy  of  scholarship,  from  the  ordinary  rut  of  party 
commonplace,  may  be  judged  also  from  his  little  paper  entitled 
Falsification  of  English  History.  It  is  a  gallant  little  paper,  and 
one  of  the  best  rebukes  in  our  language  to  that  systematic  vilifica- 
tion of  the  Puritan  Revolution,  the  English  Commonwealth,  and 
the  Reign  of  Cromwell,  which  has  come  down  in  the  Anglican 
mind  as  an  inheritance  from  the  Restoration,  and  still  vulgarizes 
so  much  of  our  scholarshiy)  and  our  literature. 

The  Dialogues  of  the  Three  Templars  and  the  Logic  of  Political 


DE  QUINCEY'S  WRITINGS  3 1 

Economy  are  De  Quincey's  chief  contributions  to  the  literature 
of  Economic  Science.  As  to  the  Uterary  deftness  of  the  essay 
and  the  treatise  there  is  no  doubt.  For  cutting  lucidity  of  exposi- 
tion and  beauty  of  style  they  are  to  be  envied  by  most  writers  on 
Political  Economy.  This  seems  to  have  been  felt  by  Mr.  John 
Stuart  Mill,  who  mentions  De  Qaincey  with  respect,  and  uses 
quotations  from  him  thankfully,  in  parts  of  his  standard  work. 
The  question  rather  is  whether  De  Quincey  has  any  title,  such  as 
he  himself  seemed  to  claim,  to  the  character  of  an  original  thinker 
in  the  matter  of  the  science.  Mr.  Mill's  language  in  one  place 
appears  to  negative  this  claim,  though  very  gently ;  and  the  ques- 
tion has  been  reopened,  in  De  Quincey's  interest,  by  Mr.  Shad- 
worth  Hodgson  in  an  essay  entitled  "De  Quincey  as  Political 
Economist."     Enough  here  on  that  matter. 

If  De  Quincey  surpasses  himself  anywhere  in  his  didactic 
papers,  it  is  in  those  that  concern  Literary  Theory  and  Criticism. 
No  English  writer  has  left  a  finer  body  of  disquisition  on  the  science 
and  principles  of  Literature  than  will  be  found  in  De  Quincey's 
general  papers  entitled  Rhetoric,  Style,  and  Language,  and  his 
Letters  to  a  Young  Man,  together  with  his  more  particular  articles 
entitled  Theory  of  Greek  Tragedy,  The  Antigone  of  Sophocles, 
Milton,  Milton  versus  Southey  and  Landor,  Alexander  Pope,  Lord 
Carlisle  on  Pope,  Schlosser's  Literary  History  of  the  Eighteenth 
Century,  and  On  Wordsworth's  Poetry.  There,  or  elsewhere,  in 
De  Quincey,  will  be  found  the  last  word,  so  far  as  there  can  be  a 
last  word,  on  some  of  the  most  important  questions  of  style  or 
literary  art,  and  a  treatment  of  literary  questions  throwing  back 
into  mere  obsolete  ineptitude  the  literary  theories  of  such  masters 
of  the  eighteenth  century  as  Addison  and  Johnson,  and  of  such  of 
their  successors  as  the  acute  Jeffrey  and  the  robust  but  coarse- 
grained Whately.  Goethe,  the  greatest  literary  critic  that  ever 
lived,  was  more  comprehensive  and  universally  tolerant;  but 
De  Quincey  was  facile  princeps,^  to  the  extent  of  his  touch,  among 
the  English  critics  of  his  generation.  He  acknowledged  that  he 
had  received  some  of  his  leading  ideas  in  literary  art  from  Words- 
worth originally;  but  whatever  he  derived  from  Wordsworth 
was  matured  by  so  much  independent  reflection,  and  so  modified 
by  the  peculiarities  of  his  own  temperament,  that  the  result  was 
a  system  of  precepts  differing  from  Wordsworth's  in  not  a  few 
points. 

'  [Easily  t±ie  chief.] 


22  DAVID  MASSON 

One  of  the  best  known  of  De  Quincey's  critical  maxims  is  his 
distinction,  after  Wordsworth,  between  the  Literature  of  Know- 
ledge, which  he  would  call  Literature  only  by  courtesy,  and  the 
Literature  of  Power,  which  alone  he  regarded  as  Literature  proper. 
My  belief  is  that  the  distinction  has  been  overworked  in  the  form 
in  which  De  Quincey  put  it  forth,  and  that  it  would  recjuire  a 
great  deal  of  reexplication  and  modification  to  bring  it  into  defen- 
sible and  permanent  shape.  As  it  would  be  unpardonable,  how- 
ever, to  omit  this  De  Quinceyism  in  a  sketch  of  De  Quincey's 
opinions,  here  is  one  of  the  passages  in  which  he  expounds  it :  — 

The  Literature  of  Knowledge  and  the  Literature  of  Power 

In  that  great  social  organ  which,  collectively,  we  call  Literature,  there  may 
be  distinguished  two  separate  offices  that  may  blend  and  often  do  so,  but 
capable,  severally,  of  a  severe  insulation,  and  naturally  fitted  for  reciprocal  re- 
pulsion. There  is,  first,  the  literature  of  knowledge,  and,  secondly,  the  litera- 
ture of  power.  The  function  of  the  first  is  to  teach ;  the  function  of  the  sec- 
ond is  to  move:  the  first  is  a  rudder,  the  second  an  oar  or  a  sail.  The  first 
speaks  to  the  mere  discursive  understanding;  the  second  speaks  ultimately, 
it  may  happen,  to  the  higher  understanding  or  reason,  but  always  through 
affections  of  pleasure  and  sympathy.  Remotely,  it  may  travel  towards  an 
object  seated  in  what  Lord  Bacon  calls  dry  light;  but,  pro.ximately,  it  does 
and  must  operate,  else  it  ceases  to  be  a  literature  of  power,  in  and  through 
that  humid  light  which  clothes  itself  in  the  mists  and  glittering  iris  of  human 
passions,  desires,  and  genial  emotions.  Men  have  so  little  reflected  on 
the  higher  functions  of  literature  as  to  find  it  a  paradox  if  one  should  describe 
it  as  a  mean  or  subordinate  purpose  of  books  to  give  information.  But  this 
is  a  paradox  only  in  the  sense  which  makes  it  honourable  to  be  parado.xical. 
Whenever  we  talk  in  ordinary  language  of  seeking  information  or  gaining 
knowledge,  we  understand  the  words  as  connected  with  something  of  absolute 
novelty.  But  it  is  the  grandeur  of  all  truth  which  can  occupy  a  very  high  place 
in  human  interests  that  it  is  never  absolutely  novel  to  the  meanest  of  minds :  it 
exists  eternally  by  way  of  germ  or  latent  principle  in  the  lowest  as  in  the  high- 
est, needing  to  be  developed,  but  never  to  be  planted.  To  be  capable  of 
transplantation  is  the  immediate  criterion  of  a  truth  that  ranges  on  a  lower 
scale.  Besides  which,  there  is  a  rarer  thing  than  truth,  —  namely,  power, 
or  deep  sympathy  with  truth.  .  .  .  Were  it  not  that  human  sensibilities  are 
ventilated  and  continually  called  out  into  exercise  by  the  great  phenomena  of 
infancy,  or  of  real  life  as  it  moves  through  chance  and  change,  or  of  literature 
as  it  recombines  these  elements  in  the  mimicries  of  poetry,  romance,  &c., 
it  is  certain  that,  like  any  animal  power  or  muscular  energy  falling  into  dis- 
use, all  such  sensibilities  would  gradually  drop  and  dwindle.  It  is  in  relation 
to  these  great  mora!  capacities  of  man  that  the  literature  of  power,  as  contra- 
distinguished from  that  of  knowledge,  lives  and  has  its  field  of  action.  It  is 
concerned  with  what  is  highest  in  man;  for  the  Scriptures  themselves  never 
condescended  to  deal,  by  suggestion  or  cooperation,  with  the  mere  discursive 
understanding:  when  speaking  of  man  in  his  intelhctual  capacity,  the  Scrip- 


DE  QUINCEY'S  WRITINGS  33 

tures  speak  not  of  the  understanding,  but  of  "the  understanding  heart,''  — 
making  the  heart,  i.e.  the  great  intuitive  (or  non-discursive)  organ,  to  be  the 
interchangeable  formula  for  man  in  his  highest  state  of  capacity  for  the  in- 
finite. Tragedy,  romance,  fairy  tale,  or  epopee,  all  alike  restore  to  man's 
mind  the  ideals  of  justice,  of  hope,  of  truth,  of  mercy,  of  retribution,  which 
else  (left  to  the  support  of  daily  life  in  its  realities)  would  languish  for  want  of 
sufficient  illustration.  .  .  .  Hence  the  preeminency  over  all  authors  that 
merely  teach  of  the  meanest  that  moves,  or  that  teaches,  if  at  all,  indirectly  by 
moving.  The  very  highest  work  that  has  ever  existed  in  the  literature  of 
knowledge  is  but  a  provisional  work,  a  book  upon  trial  and  sufferance,  and 
quamdiu  bene  se  gesserit}  Let  its  teaching  be  even  partially  revised,  let  it  be 
but  expanded,  nay,  let  its  teaching  be  but  placed  in  a  better  order,  and  in- 
stantly it  is  superseded.  Whereas  the  feeblest  works  in  the  literature  of 
power,  surviving  at  all,  survive  as  finished  and  unalterable  amongst  men. 
For  instance,  the  Principia  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton  was  a  book  militant  on  earth 
from  the  first.  In  all  stages  of  its  progress  it  would  have  to  fight  for  its 
existence,  —  first,  as  regards  absolute  truth;  secondly,  when  that  combat  was 
over,  as  regards  its  form  or  mode  of  presenting  the  truth.  And,  as  soon  as  a 
La  Place,  or  anybody  else,  builds  higher  upon  the  foundations  laid  by  this 
book,  effectually  he  throws  it  out  of  the  sunshine  into  decay  and  darkness; 
by  weapons  even  from  this  book  he  superannuates  and  destroys  this  book, 
so  that  soon  the  name  of  Newton  remains  as  a  mere  nominis  umbra,'^  but  his 
book,  as  a  living  power,  has  transmigrated  into  other  forms.  Now,  on  the 
contrary,  the  Iliad,  the  Prometheus  of  ^schylus,  the  Othello  or  King  Lear, 
the  Hamlet  or  Macbeth,  or  the  Paradise  Lost,  are  not  militant,  but  triumphant 
forever,  as  long  as  the  languages  exist  in  which  they  speak  or  can  be  taught 
to  speak.  They  never  can  transmigrate  into  new  incarnations.  To  repro- 
duce them  in  new  forms  or  variations,  even  if  in  some  things  they  should  be 
improved,  would  be  to  plagiarize.  A  good  steam-engine  is  properly  super- 
seded by  a  better.  But  one  lovely  pastoral  valley  is  not  superseded  by  an- 
other, nor  a  statue  of  Praxiteles  by  a  statue  of  Michael  Angelo.  —  Works, 
viii.  5-9- 

III.    IMAGINATIVE   WRITINGS   AND   PROSE   POETRY 

In  this  class  may  be  reckoned  the  following :  — 

I.  Humorous  Extravaganzas  :  —  The  paragon  in  this  kind  is,  of  course, 
Murder  considered  as  one  of  the  Fine  Arts.  There  are,  however,  occasional 
passages  of  frolicsome  invention  through  the  other  papers;  and  the  entire 
paper  Sortilege  and  Astrology  may  be  taken  as  a  jeu  d' esprit  of  the  same  sort. 

II.  Incidents  of  Real  Life  and  Passages  of  History  treated  imagi- 
natively:—  In  addition  to  the  poetic  versions  of  incidents  from  real  life 
that  are  interwrought  with  the  expressly  autobiographic  writings,  there 
ought  to  be  mentioned  specially  the  paper  entitled  Early  Memorials  of  Gras- 
mere.  It  is  the  story  of  the  loss  of  two  peasants,  a  husband  and  his  wife, 
among  the  hills,  during  a  snowstorm  in  the  Lake  District,  in  the  year  1807. 
In  the  same  group,  on  grounds  of  literary  principle,  may  be  reckoned  the 

*  [During  good  behaviour,  —  as  long  as  it  shall  conduct  itself  well.] 
^  [The  shadow  of  a  name.] 


34 


DAVID   MASSON 


story  called  The  Spa)usJi  Military  Nun  and  the  paper  entitled  Joan  of  Arc. 
As  has  been  already  hinted,  Tlie  Revolt  o)  the  Tartars  might  rank  in  the  same 
high  company. 

III.  Novelettes  and  Romances  :  —  Chief  among  these  is  De  Quin- 
cey's  one-volume  novel  or  romance,  Klosterheim,  published  in  1832,  and  un- 
fortunately not  included  in  the  edition  of  his  collected  works,  nor  accessible 
at  present  in  any  form,  to  any  of  her  Majesty's  subjects,  except  by  importation 
of  an  .American  reprint.  In  connection  with  this  independent  attempt  in 
prose-lrction,  we  may  remember  the  short  story  or  novelette  called  The 
Avenger  (reprinted  in  Vol.  XVI.  from  Blackwood' s  Magazine  of  1838)  and 
Walladmor,  the  pseudo-Waverley  Novel  of  1824,  which  De  Quincey  trans- 
lated from  the  German.  There  are,  besides,  some  novelettes  from  the  Ger- 
man, reprinted  in  the  collective  edition. 

IV.  Prose  Phantasies  and  Lyrics  :  —  Although  De  Quincey  ranked 
the  whole  of  his  Confessions  as  properly  an  example  of  that  "mode  of  im- 
passioned prose"  in  which  he  thought  there  had  been  few  or  no  precedents  in 
English,  it  is  enough  here  to  remember  those  parts  of  the  Confessions  which 
may  be  distinguished  as  "dream  phantasies."  To  be  added,  under  our  pres- 
ent heading  (besides  passages  in  the  Autobiographic  Sketches),  are  The 
Daughter  of  Lebanon,  the  extraordinary  paper  in  three  parts  called  The 
English  Mail  Coach,  and  the  little  cluster  of  fragments  called  Suspiria  de 
Profundis  {i.e.  "Sighs  from  the  Depths"),  being  a  Sequel  to  the  Confessions 
of  an  English  Opium-Eater.  In  fact,  however,  only  three  of  the  six  fragments 
there  gathered  under  the  common  name  of  "Suspiria"  are  either  "lyrics"  or 
"phantasies,"  the  rest  being  critical  or  psychological.  The  three  entitled 
to  a  place  here  are  those  entitled  Levana  and  our  Ladies  of  Sorrow,  Savannah- 
la-Mar,  and  Memorial  Suspiria. 

The  celebrity  of  the  essay  On  Murder  considered  as  one  of  the 
Fine  Arts  is  not  surprising.  The  ghastly  originality  of  the  con- 
ception, the  humorous  irony  with  which  it  is  sustained  by  stroke 
after  stroke,  and  the  mad  frenzy  of  the  closing  scene,  where  the 
assembled  club  of  amateurs  in  murder,  with  Toad-in-the-hole 
leading  them,  drink  their  toasts,  and  sing  their  chorus  in  honour 
of  certain  superlative  specimens  of  their  favourite  art,  leave  an 
impression  altogether  exceptional,  as  of  pleasure  mixed  illegiti- 
mately with  the  forbidden  and  horrible.  For  a  lighter  and  more 
genial  specimen  of  De  Quincey  in  his  whimsical  vein,  Sortilege 
and  Astrology  may  be  cordially  recommended.  To  pass  from 
such  papers  to  Early  Memorials  of  Grasmere,  The  Spanish  Mili- 
tary Nun,  and  Joan  of  Arc,  gives  one  a  fresh  idea  of  the  versa- 
tility of  his  powers.  The  first,  descril^ng  winter  among  the  English 
Lakes,  and  telling  the  tragic  story  of  George  and  Sarah  Green, 
and  of  the  bravery  of  their  little  girl  left  in  charge  of  the  cottage 
to  which  they  were  never  to  return  alive,  has  all  the  mournful 
beauty  of  a   commemorative   prose-poem.     The  second,   which 


DE  QUINCEY'S   WRITINGS  35 

is  a  narrative,  from  historical  materials,  of  the  adventures  of  a 
daring  Spanish  girl,  in  man's  disguise,  first  in  Spain  and  then  in 
the  Spanish  parts  of  the  new  world,  in  the  beginning  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  is  in  De  Quincey's  most  characteristic  style  of 
mingled  humour  and  earnestness,  and  has  all  the  fascination  of 
one  of  the  best  of  the  Spanish  picaresque  romances.  The  paper 
on  Joan  of  Arc,  though  brief,  is  nobly  perfect.  "What  is  to  be 
thought  of  her?  What  is  to  be  thought  of  the  poor  shepherd 
girl  from  the  hills  and  forests  of  Lorraine,  that,  like  the  Hebrew 
shepherd  boy  from  the  hills  and  forests  of  Judea,  rose  suddenlv 
out  of  the  quiet,  out  of  the  safety,  out  of  the  religious  inspiration, 
rooted  in  deep  pastoral  solitudes,  to  a  station  in  the  van  of  armies, 
and  to  the  more  perilous  station  at  the  right  hand  of  kings?" 
Opening  in  this  strain  of  poetic  solemnity,  the  paper  maintains 
the  same  high  tone  throughout;  and,  if  it  does  not  leave  the  ques- 
tion answered  by  enshrining  the  image  of  the  Maid  of  Orleans 
in  a  sufficient  vision  of  glory,  there  is  no  such  answer  in  the  English 
language. 

De  Quincey  included  in  his  collected  works  two  short  tales  of 
clever  humour,  called  The  Incognito,  or  Count  Fitzhum,  and  The 
King  of  Hayti,  and  a  third,  called  The  Dice,  a  short  story  of 
devilry  and  black  art,  describing  the  first  as  "translated  from 
the  German  of  Dr.  Schultze,"  and  the  other  two  merely  as  "from 
the  German."  Passing  these  and  a  fourth  tale,  called  The  Fatal 
Marksman,  which  is  somewhat  in  the  style  of  the  third,  and  seems 
also  to  be  from  the  German  (though  that  is  not  stated),  we  have, 
as  the  single  original  novelette  of  De  Quincey  among  the  collected 
works,  the  strange  piece  called  The  Avenger.  It  is  a  story,  wholly 
fantastic  and  sensational,  but  quite  in  De  Quincey's  vein,  of  a 
series  of  appalling  and  mysterious  murders  supposed  to  happen 
in  a  German  town  in  the  year  181 6,  and  of  the  astounding 
discovery  at  last  that  they  have  all  been  the  work  of  a  certain 
magnificent  youth,  Maximilian  Wyndham,  of  mixed  English  and 
Jewish  descent,  and  of  immense  wealth,  who  had  come  to  reside 
in  the  town,  in  the  house  of  one  of  the  University  professors,  with 
high  Russian  credentials  and  universal  acceptance  among  the 
citizens.  He  had  come  thither  nominally  to  complete  his  studies 
but  really  in  pursuit  of  a  secret  scheme  of  vengeance  upon  those 
of  the  inhabitants  who  had  been  concerned  in  certain  deadly  in- 
juries and  dishonours  done  to  his  family,  and  especially  to  his 
Jewish  mother.     The  story  does  not  appear  to  have  been  much 


36  DAVID   MASSON 

read;  and  admirers  of  De  Quincey  may  judge  from  this  descrip- 
tion of  it  whether  it  is  worth  looking  up.  It  may  be  even  more 
necessary  to  give  some  account  of  Klosterheim,  or  the  Masque. 

As  originally  published  by  Blackwood  in  1832,  it  was  a  small 
prettily-printed  volume  of  305  pages,  without  De  Quincey's  name 
after  the  title,  but  only  the  words  "By  the  English  Opium-Eater." 
It  would  make  about  half  a  volume  in  the  collective  edition  of  the 
works,  were  it  included  there. 

The  scene  of  the  story  is  an  imaginary  German  city,  Kloster- 
heim, with  its  forest-neighbourhood;    and  the  time  is  the  winter 
of  1633,  with  part  of  the  year  1634,  or  just  at  that  point  of  the 
great  Thirty  Years'   War  when,   after  the  death  of   Gustavus- 
Adolphus,  his  Swedish  generals  are  maintaining  the  war  against 
the  Imperialists,  and  all  Germany  is  in  confusion  and  misery  with 
the  marchings  and  counter-marchings,  the  ravagings  and  counter- 
ravagings,  of  the  opposed  armies.     The  Klosterheimers,  as  good 
Catholics,  are  mainly  in  sympathy  with  the  Imperialists,  but  are 
in  the  peculiar  predicament  of  being  subject  to  a  gloomy  and 
tyrannical  Landgrave,  who,  though  a  bigoted  Roman  Catholic, 
has  reasons  of  his  own  for  cultivating  the  Swedish  alliance,  and 
is  in  fact  in  correspondence  with  the  Swedes.     A  leading  spirit 
among  them,  and  especially  among  the  University  students,  is  a 
certain  splendid  soldier-youth,   Maximilian,   a  stranger  from  a 
distance.     So,  when  the  Klosterheimers  are  in  excitement  over 
the  approach  to  their  city,  through  the  forest,  of  a  travelling  mass 
of  pilgrims,  under  Imperialist  convoy,  all  the  way  from  Vienna, 
and  over  the  chances  that  the  poor  pilgrims  may  be  attacked  and 
cut  to  pieces  by  a  certain  brutal  Holkerstein,  the  head  of  a  host 
of  marauders  who  prowl  through  the  forest,  who  but  this  Maximil- 
ian is  the  man  to  execute  the  general  desire  of  Klosterheim  by 
evading  the  orders  of  the  cruel  Landgrave  and  carrying  armed 
aid  to  the  pilgrims ?     Well  that  he  has  done  so;  for  in  the  midst  of 
the  pilgrim-cavalcade,  and  the  chief  personage  in  it,  is  his  own 
lady-love,   the   noble   Paulina,   a   relative  of  the   Emperor,   and 
intrusted  by  him  with  despatches.     The  lovers  meet;    and,  save 
for  a  night-alarm,  in  the  course  of  which  the  portmanteau  of 
secret  despatches  is  abstracted  by  robbers  from  Lady  Paulina's 
carriage,  there  is  no  accident  till  the  pilgrims  are  close  to  Kloster- 
heim.    There,   in   the   night-time,   Holkerstein   and  his   host  of 
marauders  do  fall  u[)on  them.     There  is  a  dreadful  night-battle; 
and,  though  the  marauding  host  is  beaten  off,  chiefly  by  the  heroic 


DE  QUINCEY'S   WRITINGS  37 

valour  of  Maximilian,  it  is  but  a  wreck  of  the  pilgrim-army  that 
enters  Klosterheim  on  the  morrow,  —  and  then  alas !  without 
Maximilian  among  them.  He  has  been  carried  away  by  the 
marauders,  a  wounded  prisoner.  The  residue  of  the  poor  pil- 
grims are  dispersed  through  the  city  somehow  for  hospitality, 
and  the  doleful  Lady  Paulina  takes  up  her  abode  in  the  great 
abbey,  close  to  the  Landgrave's  palace.  Then,  for  a  while,  we 
are  among  the  Klosterheimers,  and  called  upon  to  pity  them. 
For  the  gloomy  Landgrave,  always  a  tyrant,  now  revels  in  acts 
of  tyranny  and  cruelty  utterly  indiscriminate  and  capricious, 
maddened  by  the  goad  of  some  new  motive,  which  is  not  explained, 
but  which  we  connect  with  intelligence  he  has  obtained  from  the 
abstracted  imperial  despatches.  There  are  arrests  of  students 
and  citizens;  all  are  in  consternation;  no  one  knows  what  will 
happen  next.  Suddenly,  however,  a  counter-agency  is  at  work 
in  Klosterheim,  baffling  and  bewildering  the  Landgrave  and  his 
wily  Italian  minister  Aclorni.  This  is  a  certain  mysterious  being, 
whether  human  or  supernatural  no  one  can  tell,  who  calls  himself 
"The  Masque,"  and  seems  omnipresent  and  resistless.  He 
appears  when  and  where  he  likes,  passes  through  bolts  and  bars, 
leaves  messages  to  the  Landgrave  nailed  up  in  public  places,  and 
defies  his  police.  Houses  are  entered;  citizens  disappear,  some- 
times with  signs  of  scuffle  and  bloodshed  left  in  their  rooms;  and, 
as  these  victims  of  "The  Masque"  are  not  exclusively  from  the 
ranks  of  the  Landgrave's  partisans,  it  becomes  doubtful  whether 
the  mysterious  being  has  any  political  purpose,  or  is  a  mere  demon 
of  general  malignity.  But,  evidently,  the  Landgrave  is  his  main 
mark;  and  it  is  in  the  palace  of  the  Landgrave  that  he  makes 
his  presence  and  his  power  most  daringly  felt.  How,  for  example, 
he  appeared  there  at  a  great  masked  ball,  to  which  exactly  twelve 
hundred  persons  had  been  invited  by  numbered  tickets;  how, 
when  the  twelve  hundred  had  been,  by  arrangement,  counted  off 
in  the  hall,  and  aggregated  apart,  he  was  seen  in  majestic  and 
solitary  composure,  leaning  against  a  marble  column,  and  it  seemed 
as  if  the  Landgrave  and  Adorni  had  but  to  give  the  word  to  their 
myrmidons  to  clutch  him;  but  how  there  was  nothing  of  that 
expected  catastrophe,  but  only  a  scornful  disappearance  of  the 
awful  figure,  as  if  in  cloud  or  smoke,  after  some  words  from  his 
hollow  voice  which  left  the  Landgrave  trembling :  —  for  all  this, 
and  much  more,  there  must  be  application  inside  the  little  volume 
itself.     In  reading  it,  you  are  as  if  in  the  heart  of  one  of  Mrs. 


46783 


38  DAVID   MASSON 

Radclifife's  novels,  with  the  usual  paraphernalia  of  cloaks,  nodding 
plumes,  ghostly  sounds,  labyrinthine  corridors  and  secret  passages, 
pictures  of  ancestors  on  the  walls,  and  the  rest  of  it;  and  you  long 
to  be  out  of  such  a  curiosity  shop  of  jumbled  incredibilities,  and 
to  know  the  denouement.  That  does  not  come  till  after  new  epi- 
sodes of  danger  to  Lady  Paulina,  new  coils  of  marvel  round  the 
mysterious  "Masque,"  and  a  second  great  assembly  in  the  palace, 
with  a  vast  mechanism  of  new  preparations  by  the  infuriated 
Landgrave  for  the  discomfiture  of  his  adversary.  Let  these  be 
supposed;  and  let  it  be  supposed  that  the  6th  of  September,  1634, 
has  passed,  and  that  the  Swedes  have  been  routed  and  the  Im- 
perialists triumphant  in  the  great  battle  of  Nordlingen.  What 
need  then  for  further  mystery?  The  hour  has  come  for  that 
revolution  in  Klosterheim  which  the  Emperor  himself  had  de- 
vised from  Vienna,  and  manipulated  in  the  secret  despatches  he 
had  sent  by  the  Lady  Paulina.  All  is  revealed  in  a  crash.  Maxi- 
milian is  the  true  Landgrave,  the  hitherto  undivulged  son  of  the 
last  good  Landgrave;  and  the  present  usurper  had  come  to  his 
power  by  the  murder  of  Maximilian's  father,  and  maintained  it 
by  other  crimes.  In  the  crash  of  this  revelation  the  gloomy 
usurper  sinks,  the  last  blow  to  the  wretched  man  being  the  death 
of  his  daughter  by  a  mistake  of  his  own  murderous  order  for  the 
execution  of  the  Lady  Paulina.  Maximilian  marries  Paulina; 
there  are  other  more  minute  solutions  and  surprises;  and  the 
Klosterheimers,  under  their  new  Landgrave,  are  again  a  happy 
people.  But  who  was  the  mysterious  "Masque"?  Who  but 
Maximilian  himself?  TraD-doors  and  subterranean  passages, 
his  own  dexterity,  and  collusion  with  the  requisite  number  of 
citizens  and  students,  and  with  an  old  seneschal  of  the  tyrant,  had 
done  the  whole  business;  and  the  only  blood  really  shed  in  the 
course  of  it  had  been  that  of  the  poor  seneschal,  betrayed  by 
accident,  and  stabbed  by  his  master. 

Such  is  De  Quincey's  one-volume  romance,  a  poor  performance, 
doubtless  for  the  sake  of  a  little  money,  about  the  time  when  he 
settled  in  Edinburgh.  Was  he  ashamed  of  it  afterwards,  that 
he  did  not  reprint  it  ?  There  was  no  necessitv  for  that ;  for,  though 
the  story  does  not  show  the  craft  of  a  Sir  Walter  Scott,  it  is  by  no 
means  bad  of  its  preposterous  kind.  The  style,  at  all  events,  is 
remarkably  careful,  with  a  marble  beauty  of  sentence  that  makes 
one  linger  as  one  reads. 

There  remains  to  be  noticed,  in  the  last  place,  that  very  special 


DE  QUINCEY'S  WRITINGS  39 

portion  of  De  Quincey's  writings  of  the  imaginative  order  for 
which  he  claimed  distinction  above  the  rest,  as  illustrating  "a 
mode  of  impassioned  prose"  but  slightly  represented  before  in 
English   Literature.     It   may  be   questioned,   however,   whether 
the  pieces  for  which  he  claimed  this  distinction  are  described  most 
exactly  by  the  phrase  "impassioned  prose."     Their  peculiarity 
is  not  so  much  that  they  are  impassioned  in  any  ordinary  sense 
as  that  they  are  imaginative  or  poetical  after  a  very  definite  and 
rather  rare  sort.     It  was  one  of  the  distinctions  of  De  Quincey's 
intellect  that  it  could  pass  from  that  ordinary  or  discursive  exer- 
cise of  itself  which  consists  in  expounding,  reasoning,  or  investi- 
gating, to  that  poetic  exercise  of  itself  which  consists  in  the  for- 
mation of  visions  or  phantasies;    and  it  did,  in  fact,  so  pass  on 
those  occasions  more  particularly  when  it  was  moved  by  pathos 
or  by  the  feeling  of  the  mysterious  and  awful.     What  is  most 
observable,   therefore,   in   the  pieces   under  notice   is   that   they 
exhibit  the  operation  of  those  two  constitutional  kinds  of  emotion 
upon  De  Quincey's  intellectual  activity,  transmuting  it  from  the 
common  or  discursive  mode  to  that  called  poetic  imagination. 
Inasmuch  as  it  is  the  implicated  feeling  or  sentiment  that  moves 
the  intellectual  process,  and  inasmuch  as  there  are  marks  of  this 
in  the  rhythmical  or  lyrical  character  of  the  result,  there  is  no 
great  harm  in  calling  that  result  impassioned  prose,  especially  if 
we  keep  to  the  limitation  stipulated  by  De  Quincey's  own  phrase, 
"a  mode  of  impassioned  prose";    but  it  is  better,  all  in  all,  to 
define  the  writings  under  consideration  as  examples  of  a  peculiar 
"mode  of  imaginative  prose,"  and,  if  further  definition  is  wanted 
of  this  peculiar  mode  of  prose  poetry,  to  call  it  Prose  Phantasy 
and  Lyric,  or  Lyrical  Prose  Phantasy.     De  Quincey  was  con- 
sciously and  deliberately  an  artist  in  this  form  of  prose-poetry,  and 
has  left  specimens  of  it  that  have  very  few  parallels  in  English. 
One  ought  to  remember,  however,  how  much  he  must  have  been 
influenced  by  the  previous  example  of  Jean  Paul  Richter.     Of  his 
admiration  of  the  famous  German  before  he  had  himself  begun 
his  career  of  literature  there  is  proof  in  his  article  on  Richter  pub- 
lished in  the  London  Magazine  in  December,  182 1,  just  after  the 
appearance  of  his  Confessions  in  their  first  form  in  the  same 
Magazine;  and  one  observes  that  among  the  translated  "analects" 
from  Richter  which  accompanied  or  followed  that  article,  and 
were  intended  to  introduce  Richter  to  the  English  public,  were 
The  Happy  Life  of  a  Parish  Priest  in  Sweden  and  the  Dream, 


40 


DAVID  MASSON 


upon  the  Universe,  both  of  them  specimens  of  Richter's  peculiar 
art  of  prose-phantasy.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Richter's 
example  in  such  pieces  influenced  De  Quincey  permanently. 
But,  thou<fh  he  may  have  learnt  something  from  Richter,  he  was 
an  original  master  in  the  same  art. 

One  might  go  back  here  on  his  Joan  of  Arc,  and  some  of  the 
other  writings  of  which  account  has  been  already  taken,  and 
claim  for  them,  or  for  parts  of  them,  fresh  recognition  in  our  present 
connection.  But  let  us  confine  ourselves  to  the  writings  to  which 
De  Quincey  seems  to  have  pointed  more  especially,  and  which 
have  been  already  enumerated. 

To  the  famous  passages  of  "dream-phantasy"  in  the  Opium 
Confessions  we  need  not  readvert  farther  than  to  say  that,  extraor- 
dinary as  they  are  as  a  whole,  one  may  fairly  object  to  parts  of 
them,  as  to  some  of  the  similar  dream-phantasies  in  Richter,  that 
they  fail  by  too  much  obtrusion  of  artistic  self-consciousness  in 
their  construction,  and  sometimes  also  by  a  swooning  of  the  power 
of  clear  and  consecutive  vision  in  a  mere  piling  and  excess  of 
imagery  and  sound.  The  stroke  on  the  mind  at  the  time  is  not 
always  equal  to  the  look  of  the  apparatus  for  inflicting  it;  and 
the  memory  does  not  retain  a  sufficient  scar.  No  such  objection 
can  be  urged  against  The  Daughter  of  Lebanon,  a  fine  visionary 
lyric  of  seven  pages,  figuring  an  early  and  miraculous  conversion 
to  Christianity  in  the  person  of  an  ideal  girl  of  Damascus.  Nor 
could  any  of  De  Quincey's  readers  give  up  the  first  two  sections 
of  The  English  Mail  Coach,  subtitled  "The  Glory  of  Motion"  and 
"The  Vision  of  Sudden  Death."  There  is  nothing  in  Jean  Paul 
quite  like  these. 

In  the  first  we  are  back  in  the  old  days  between  Trafalgar  and 
Waterloo.  Drawn  up  at  the  General  Post  Office  in  Lombard 
Street,  and  waiting  for  the  hour  to  start,  we  see  His  Majesty's 
mails,  —  carriages,  harness,  horses,  lamps,  the  dresses  of  driver 
and  guard,  all  in  the  perfection  of  English  equipment,  and,  if 
there  has  been  news  that  day  of  a  great  victory,  then  the  laurels, 
the  oak  leaves,  the  flowers,  the  ribbons,  in  addition.  Seating 
ourselves  beside  the  driver  on  one  of  the  mails,  we  begin  our  jour- 
ney of  three  hundred  miles  along  one  of  the  great  roads,  north  or 
west,  leaving  Lombard  Street  at  a  quarter  past  eight  in  the  even- 
ing. How,  once  out  into  the  country,  we  shoot  along,  horses  at 
gallop,  the  breeze  in  our  faces,  hedges  and  trees  and  fields  and 
homesteads  rushing  past  us  in  the  darkness  which  we  and  our 


DE  QUINCEY'S   WRITINGS  41 

lamps  are  cleaving  like  a  fiery  arrow !  How,  at  every  stopping- 
station,  there  are  the  lights  and  bustle  at  the  inn-door,  and  the 
laurels  and  other  bedizenments  we  carry  are  seen  ere  we  have 
well  stopped,  and  we  shout  "Badajoz"  or  "Salamanca"  in  ex- 
planation, or  whatever  else  may  have  been  the  last  victory,  and 
the  hostlers  and  other  inn-folk  take  up  the  huzza,  and  it  is  one 
round  of  congratulation  and  hand-shaking  while  we  stay !  But, 
punctually  to  the  minute,  having  changed  horses,  and  left  the 
news  palpitating  in  that  neighbourhood,  we  are  on  again, 
horses  at  gallop,  coach-lamps  burning,  and  we  beside  the  driver 
on  the  front  seat,  conscious  that  we  are  carrying  the  same  news 
with  us  to  neighbourhoods  still  ahead  !  On,  on,  stage  after  stage, 
in  the  same  fashion,  still  cleaving  the  darkness,  the  horse-hoofs 
always  audible  and  the  coach-lamps  always  burning,  till  the 
darkness  yields  to  a  silver  glimmer  and  the  glimmer  to  the  glare 
of  day !  —  Such  is  the  series  of  sensations  De  Quincey  has  con- 
trived to  give  us  in  his  prose-poem  called  "The  Glory  of  Motion." 
In  the  sequel,  entitled  "The  Vision  of  Sudden  Death,"  we  are 
still  on  the  same  night  journey  by  coach,  or  rather  on  one  later 
night  journey  on  the  northern  road  between  sixty  and  seventy 
years  ago,  with  the  difference  that  the  glory  of  motion  is  now 
turned  into  horror.  Prosaically  described,  the  paper  is  a  recol- 
lection of  a  fatal  accident  by  collision  of  the  mail,  in  a  very  dark 
part  of  the  road,  with  a  solitary  vehicle  containing  two  persons,  one 
of  them  a  woman ;  but  it  is  for  the  paper  itself  to  show  what  the 
incident  becomes  in  De  Quincey's  hands.  —  It  passes  into  a  third 
paper,  still  under  the  same  general  title  of  The  English  Mail 
Coach;  which  third  paper  indeed,  bears  the  extraordinary  subtitle 
of  "Dream-Fugue,  founded  on  the  preceding  theme  of  Sudden 
Death."  I  cannot  say  that  this  "dream-fugue,"  which  is  offered 
as  a  lyrical  finale  to  the  little  series,  in  visionary  coherence  with 
the  preceding  pieces,  accomplishes  its  purpose  very  successfully. 
It  is  liable  to  the  objection  which  may  be  urged,  as  we  have 
said,  against  other  specimens  of  De  Quincey  in  the  peculiar  art 
of  dream-phantasy.  The  artifice  is  too  apparent,  and  the  mean- 
ing is  all  but  lost  in  a  mere  vague  of  music. 

Of  the  three  scraps  of  the  Suspiria  that  are  entitled  to  rank 
among  the  lyrical  prose-phantasies,  viz.,  Levana  and  Our  Ladies 
of  Sorrow,  Savannah-la- Mar,  and  Memorial  Suspiria,  only  the 
first  is  of  much  importance.  But  that  scrap,  written  in  De  Quin- 
cey's later  life,  is  of  as  high  importance  as  anything  he  ever  wrote. 


42  DAVID   MASSON 

It  is  perhaps  the  highest  and  finest  thing,  and  also  the  most 
constitutionally  significant,  in  all  De  Quincey.  Fortunately,  the 
essential  core  of  it  can  be  quoted  entire.  All  that  it  is  necessary 
to  premise  is  that  "Levana"  was  the  Roman  Goddess  of  Educa- 
tion, the  divinity  who  was  supposed  to  "lift  up"  every  newly- 
born  human  being  from  the  earth  in  token  that  it  should  live,  and 
to  rule  the  influences  to  which  it  should  be  subject  thenceforth 
till  its  character  should  be  fully  formed :  — 

The  Three  Ladies  of  Sorrow 

I  know  them  thoroughly,  and  have  walked  in  all  their  kingdoms.  Three 
sisters  they  are,  of  one  mysterious  household ;  and  their  paths  are  wide  apart ; 
but  of  their  dominion  there  is  no  end.  Them  I  saw  often  conversing  with 
Levana,  and  sometimes  about  myself .  Do  they  talk,  then?  O,  no!  Mighty 
phantoms  like  these  disdain  the  infirmities  of  language.  They  may  utter 
voices  through  the  organs  of  man  when  they  dwell  in  human  hearts,  but 
amongst  themselves  there  is  no  voice  nor  sound;  eternal  silence  reigns  in 
their  kingdoms.  They  spoke  not,  as  they  talked  with  Levana;  they  whis- 
pered not ;  they  sang  not ;  though  oftentimes  methought  they  might  have 
sung:  for  I  upon  earth  had  heard  their  mysteries  oftentimes  deciphered  by 
harp  and  timbrel,  by  dulcimer  and  organ.  Like  God,  whose  servants  they 
are,  they  utter  their  pleasure,  not  by  sounds  that  perish,  or  by  words  that  go 
astray,  but  by  signs  in  heaven,  by  changes  on  earth,  by  pulses  in  secret  rivers, 
heraldries  painted  in  darkness,  and  hieroglyphics  written  on  the  tablets  of  the 
brain.  7^/zey  wheeled  in  mazes ;  7  spelled  the  steps.  T'/zey  telegraphed  from 
afar;  I  read  the  signals.  They  conspired  together;  and  on  the  mirrors  of 
darkness  my  eye  traced  the  plots.  Theirs  were  the  symbols;  mine  are  the 
words. 

What  is  it  the  sisters  are  ?  What  is  it  that  they  do  ?  Let  me  describe  their 
form  and  their  presence :  ifformitwere  that  still  fluctuated  in  its  outline, 
or  presence  it  were  that  forever  advanced  to  the  front  or  forever  receded 
amongst  shades. 

The  eldest  of  the  three  is  named  Mater  Lachrymarum,  Our  Lady  of  Tears. 
She  it  is  that  night  and  day  raves  and  moans,  calling  for  vanished  faces. 
She  stood  in  Rama,  where  a  voice  was  heard  of  lamentation,  —  Rachel 
weeping  for  her  children,  and  refusing  to  be  comforted.  She  it  was  that 
stood  in  Bethlehem  on  the  night  when  Herod's  sword  swept  its  nurseries  of 
innocents,  and  the  little  feet  were  stilTened  forever,  which,  heard  at  times  as 
they  tottered  along  floors  overhead,  woke  pulses  of  love  in  household  hi'arts 
that  were  not  unmarked  in  heaven.  Her  eyes  are  sweet  and  subtle,  wild  and 
sleepy,  by  turns;  oftentimes  rising  to  the  clouds,  oftentimes  challenging  the 
heavens.  She  wears  a  diadem  round  her  head.  And  I  knew  by  childish 
memories  that  she  could  go  abroad  upon  the  winds,  when  she  heard  the 
sobbing  of  litanies  or  the  thundering  of  organs,  and  when  she  beheld  the 
mustering  of  summer  clouds.  This  sister,  the  eldest,  it  is  that  carries  keys 
more  than  papal  at  her  girdle,  which  open  every  cottage  and  every  palace. 
She,  to  my  knowledge,  sat  all  last  summer  by  the  bedside  of  the  blind  beggar, 


DE  QUINCEY'S  WRITINGS  43 

him  that  so  often  and  so  gladly  I  talked  with,  whose  pious  daughter,  eight 
years  old,  with  the  sunny  countenance,  resisted  the  temptations  of  play  and 
village  mirth  to  travel  all  day  long  on  dusty  roads  with  her  afHicted  father. 
For  this  did  God  send  her  a' great  reward.  In  the  spring  time  of  the  year, 
and  whilst  her  own  spring  was  budding,  he  recalled  her  to  himself.  But  her 
blind  father  mourns  forever  over  her;  still  he  dreams  at  midnight  that  the 
little  guiding  hand  is  locked  within  his  own;  and  still  he  awakens  to  a  dark- 
ness that  is  now  within  a  second  and  a  deeper  darkness.  This  Mater  Lachry- 
mariim  also  has  been  sitting  all  this  winter  of  1844-5  within  the  bedchamber 
of  the  Czar,  bringing  before  his  eyes  a  daughter,  not  less  pious,  that  vanished 
to  God  not  less  suddenly,  and  left  behind  her  a  darkness  not  less  profound. 
Bv  the  power  of  the  keys  it  is  that  Our  Lady  of  Tears  glides,  a  ghostly  in- 
truder, into  the  chambers  of  sleepless  men,  sleepless  women,  sleepless  chil- 
dren, from  Ganges  to  the  Nile,  from  Nile  to  Mississippi.  And  her,  because 
she  is  the  first-born  of  her  house,  and  has  the  widest  empire,  let  us  honour  with 
the  title  of  Madonna. 

The  second  sister  is  called  Mater  Suspiriorum,  Our  Lady  of  Sighs.  She 
never  scales  the  clouds,  nor  walks  abroad  upon  the  winds.  She  wears  no 
diadem.  And  her  eyes,  if  they  were  ever  seen,  would  be  neither  sweet  nor 
subtle;  no  man  could  read  their  story;  they  would  be  found  filled  with  perish- 
ing dreams,  and  with  wrecks  of  forgotten  delirium.  But  she  raises  not  her 
eyes;  her  head,  on  which  sits  a  dilapidated  turban,  droops  forever,  forever 
fastens  on  the  dust.  She  weeps  not.  She  groans  not.  But  she  sighs  in- 
audibly  at  intervals.  Her  sister.  Madonna,  is  oftentimes  stormy  and  frantic, 
raging  in  the  highest  against  heaven,  and  demanding  back  her  darlings.  But 
Our  Lady  of  Sighs  never  clamours,  never  defies,  dreams  not  of  rebellious 
aspirations.  She  is  humble  to  abjectness.  Hers  is  the  meekness  that  belongs 
to  the  hopeless.  Murmur  she  may,  but  it  is  in  her  sleep.  Whisper  she  may, 
but  it  is  to  herself  in  the  twilight.  Mutter  she  does  at  times,  but  it  is  in  solitary 
places  that  are  desolate  as  she  is  desolate,  in  ruined  cities,  and  when  the  sun 
has  gone  down  to  his  rest.  This  sister  is  the  visitor  of  the  Pariah,  of  the  Jew, 
of  the  bondsman  to  the  oar  in  the  Mediterranean  galleys;  of  the  English 
criminal  in  Norfolk  Island,  blotted  out  from  the  books  of  remembrance  in 
sweet  far-off  England ;  of  the  baffled  penitent  reverting  his  eyes  forever  upon 
a  solitary  grave,  which  to  him  seems  the  altar  overthrown  of  some  past  and 
bloody  sacrifice,  on  which  altar  no  oblations  can  now  be  availing,  whether 
towards  pardon  that  he  might  implore,  or  towards  reparation  that  he  might 
attempt.  Every  slave  that  at  noonday  looks  up  to  the  tropical  sun  with  timid 
reproach,  as  he  points  with  one  hand  to  the  earth,  our  general  mother,  but  for 
/n'w  a  stepmother,  —  as  he  points  with  the  other  hand  to  the  Bible,  our 
general  teacher,  but  against  him  sealed  and  sequestered;  every  woman 
sitting  in  darkness,  without  love  to  shelter  her  head,  or  hope  to  illu- 
mine her  solitude,  because  the  heaven-born  instincts  kindling  in  her  nature 
germs  of  holy  affections,  which  God  implanted  in  her  womanly  bosom,  hav- 
ing been  stifled  by  social  necessities,  now  burn  sullenly  to  waste,  like  sepulchral 
lamps  amongst  the  ancients;  every  nun  defrauded  of  her  unreturning  May- 
time  by  wicked  kinsmen,  whom  God  will  judge;  all  that  are  betrayed,  and 
all  that  are  rejected ;  outcasts  by  traditionary  law,  and  children  of  hereditary 
disgrace:  —  all  these  walk  with'Our  Lady  of  Sighs.  She  also  carries  a  key, 
but  she  needs  it  little.  For  her  kingdom  is  chiefly  amongst  the  tents  of  Shem, 
and  the  houseless  vagrant  of  every  clime.     Yet  in  the  very  highest  walks  of 


44  DAVID   MASSON 

man  she  finds  chapels  of  her  own;  and  even  in  glorious  England  there  are 
some  that,  to  the  world,  carry  their  heads  as  proudly  as  the  reindeer,  who  yet 
secretly  have  received  her  mark  upon  their  foreheads. 

But  the  third  sister,  who  is  also  the  youngest  — !  Hush  !  whisper  whilst 
we  talk  of  her!  Her  kingdom  is  not  large,  or  else  no  flesh  should  live;  but 
within  that  kingdom  all  power  is  hers.  Her  head,  turreted  like  that  of  Cybele, 
rises  almost  beyond  the  reach  of  sight.  She  droops  not;  and  her  eyes,  rising 
so  high,  might  be  hidden  by  distance.  But,  being  what  they  are,  they  cannot 
be  hidden;  through  the  treble  veil  of  crape  which  she  wears,  the  fierce  light 
of  a  blazing  misery,  that  rests  not  for  matins  or  for  vespers,  for  noon  of  day 
or  noon  of  night,  for  ebbing  or  for  flowing  tide,  may  be  read  from  the  very 
ground.  She  is  the  defier  of  God.  She  is  also  the  mother  of  lunacies  and 
the  suggestress  of  suicides.  Deep  lie  the  roots  of  her  power,  but  narrow  is  the 
nation  that  she  rules.  For  she  can  approach  only  those  in  whom  a  profound 
nature  has  been  upheaved  by  central  convulsions,  in  whom  the  heart  trembles 
and  the  brain  rocks  under  conspiracies  of  tempest  from  without  and  tempest 
from  within.  Madonna  moves  with  uncertain  steps,  fast  or  slow,  but  still 
with  tragic  grace.  Our  Lady  of  Sighs  creeps  timidly  and  stealthily.  But  this 
youngest  sister  moves  with  incalculable  motions,  bounding,  and  with  tiger's 
leaps.  She  carries  no  key;  for,  though  coming  rarely  amongst  men,  she 
storms  all  doors  at  which  she  is  permitted  to  enter  at  all.  And  her  name  is 
Mater  Tenehrariim,  Our  Lady  of  Darkness. 

This  is  prose-poetry;  but  it  is  more.  It  is  a  permanent  addi- 
tion to  the  mythology  of  the  human  race.  As  the  Graces  are 
three,  as  the  Fates  are  three,  as  the  Furies  are  three,  as  the  Muses 
were  originally  three,  so  may  the  varieties  and  degrees  of  misery 
that  there  are  in  the  world,  and  the  proportions  of  their  distribu- 
tion among  mankind,  be  represented  to  the  human  imagination 
forever  by  De  Quincey's  Three  Ladies  of  Sorrow  and  his  sketch 
of  their  figures  and  kingdoms. 


Ill 

SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

( I 709-1 784) 

THE    METAPHYSICAL    POETS 
[From  the  Life  of  Cowley  (1780)  in  the  Lives  of  the  Poets] 

Cowley,  like  other  poets  who  have  written  with  narrow 
views,  and,  instead  of  tracing  intellectual  pleasure  to  its  natural 
sources  in  the  mind  of  man,  paid  their  court  to  temporary  preju- 
dices, has  been  at  one  time  too  much  praised,  and  too  much  neg- 
lected at  another. 

Wit,  like  all  other  things  subject  by  their  nature  to  the  choice 
of  man,  has  its  changes  and  fashions,  and  at  different  times  takes 
different  forms.  About  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century 
appeared  a  race  of  writers  that  may  be  termed  the  metaphysical 
poets;  of  whom,  in  a  criticism  on  the  works  of  Cowley,  it  is  not 
improper  to  give  some  account. 

The  metaphysical  poets  were  men  of  learning,  and  to  show 
their  learning  was  their  whole  endeavour;  but,  unluckily  resolved 
to  show  it  in  rhyme,  instead  of  writing  poetry,  they  only  wrote 
verses,  and  very  often  such  verses  as  stood  the  trial  of  the  finger 
better  than  of  the  ear;  for  the  modulation  was  so  imperfect,  that 
they  were  only  found  to  be  verses  by  counting  the  syllables. 

If  the  father  of  criticism  has  rightly  denominated  poetry 
rixv-q  fj.if/.rp-LKr],  an  imitative  art,  these  writers  will,  without  great 
wrong,  lose  their  right  to  the  name  of  poets;  for  they  cannot  be 
said  to  have  imitated  anything;  they  neither  copied  nature  nor 
life;  neither  painted  the  forms  of  matter,  nor  represented  the 
operations  of  intellect. 

Those,  however,  who  deny  them  to  be  poets,  allow  them  to  be 
wits.     Dryden  confesses  of  himself  and  his  contemporaries  that 

45 


46  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

they  fall  below  Donne  in  wit,  but  maintains  that  they  surpass 
him  in  poetry. 

If  wit  be  well  described  by  Pope,  as  being  "that  which  has 
been  often  thought,  but  was  never  before  so  well  expressed," 
they  certainly  never  attained,  nor  ever  sought  it;  for  they  en- 
deavourcd^-taJic  singular 4ii  their  thoughts,  and  were  careless  of 
their  diction.  But  Pope's  account  of  wit  is  undoubtedly  erro- 
neous :  he  depresses  it  below  its  natural  dignity,  and  reduces  it 
from  strength  of  thought  to  happiness  of  language. 

If  by  a  more  noble  and  more  adequate  conception  that  be  con- 
sidered as  wit  which  is  at  once  natural  and  new,  that  which,  though 
not  obvious,  is,  upon  its  first  production,  acknowledged  to  be 
just;  if  it  be  that  which  he  that  never  found  it  wonders  how  he 
missed;  to  wit  of  this  kind  the  metaphysical  poets  have  seldom 
risen.  Their  thoughts  are  often  new,  but  seldom  natural;  they 
are  not  obvious,  but  neither  are  they  just;  and  the  reader,  far 
from  wondering  that  he  missed  them,  wonders  more  frequently 
by  what  perverseness  of  industry  they  were  ever  found. 

But  wit,  abstracted  from  its  effects  upon  the  hearer,  may  be 
more  rigorously  and  philosophically  considered  as  a  kind  of  dis- 
cordia  concors;  a  combination  of  dissimilar  images,  or  discovery 
of  occult  resemblances  in  things  apparently  unlike.  Of  wit,  thus 
defined,  they  have  more  than  enough.  The  most  heterogeneous 
ideas  are  yoked  by  violence  together;  nature  and  art  are  ran- 
sacked for  illustrations,  comparisons,  and  allusions;  their  learning 
instructs,  and  their  subtlety  surprises;  but  the  reader  commonly 
thinks  his  improvement  dearly  bought,  and,  though  he  sometimes 
admires,  is  seldom  pleased. 

From  this  account  of  their  compositions  it  will  be  readily  in- 
ferred that  they  were  not  successful  in  representing  or  moving 
the  affections.  As  they  were  wholly  employed  on  something 
unexpected  and  surjjrising,  they  had  no  regard  to  that  uniformity 
of  sentiment  which  enables  us  to  conceive  and  to  excite  the  pains 
and  the  pleasure  of  other  minds:  they  never  inquired  what,  on 
any  occasion,  they  should  have  said  or  done;  but  wrote  rather 
as  beholders  than  partakers  of  human  nature;  as  Beings  looking 
upon  good  and  evil,  impassive  and  at  leisure;  as  Epicurean  deities 
making  remarks  on  the  actions  of  men  and  the  vicissitudes  of 
life  without  interest  and  without  emotion.  Their  courtship  was 
void  of  fondness,  and  their  lamentation  of  sorrow.  Their  wish 
was  only  to  say  what  they  hoped  had  never  been  said  before. 


THE  METAPHYSICAL   POETS  47 

Nor  was  the  sublime  more  within  their  reach  than  the  pathetic  ; 
for  they  never  attempted  that  comprehension  and  expanse  of 
thought  which  at  once  fills  the  whole  mind,  and  of  which  the  first 
effect  is  sudden  astonishment,  and  the  second  rational  admiration. 
Sublimity  is  produced  by  aggregation,  and  littleness  by  dispersion. 
Great  thoughts  are  always  general,  and  consist  in  positions  not 
limited  by  exceptions,  and  in  descriptions  not  descending  to  mi- 
nuteness. It  is  with  great  propriety  that  subtlety,  which  in  its 
original  import  means  exility  of  particles,  is  taken  in  its  meta- 
phorical meaning  for  nicety  of  distinction.  Those  writers  who 
lay  on  the  watch  for  novelty  could  have  little  hope  of  greatness; 
for  great  things  cannot  have  escaped  former  observation.  Their 
attempts  were  always  analytic ;  they  broke  every  image  into  frag- 
ments: and  could  no  more  represent,  by  their  slender  conceits 
and  laboured  particularities,  the  prospects  of  nature  or  the  scenes 
of  life,  than  he  who  dissects  a  sunbeam  with  a  prism  can  exhibit 
the  wide  effulgence  of  a  summer  noon. 

What  they  wanted,  however,  of  the  sublime,  they  endeavoured 
to  supply  by  hyperbole;  their  amplification  had  no  limits;  they 
left  not  only  reason  but  fancy  behind  them;  and  produced  com- 
binations of  confused  magnificence  that  not  only  could  not  be 
credited,  but  could  not  be  imagined. 

Yet  great  labour,  directed  by  great  abilities,  is  never  wholly 
lost:  if  they  frequently  threw  away  their  wit  upon  false  conceits, 
they  likewise  sometimes  struck  out  unexpected  truth :  if  their  con- 
ceits were  far-fetched,  they  were  often  worth  the  carriage.  To  write 
on  their  plan,  it  was  at  least  necessary  to  read  and  think.  No 
man  could  be  born  a  metaphysical  poet,  nor  assume  the  dignity 
of  a  writer,  by  descriptions  copied  from  descriptions,  by  imita- 
tions borrowed  from  imitations,  by  traditional  imagery  and  heredi- 
tary similes,  by  readiness  of  rhyme  and  volubility  of  syllables. 

In  perusing  the  works  of  this  race  of  authors,  the  mind  is  exer- 
cised either  by  recollection  or  inquiry;  either  something  already 
learned  is  to  be  retrieved,  or  something  new  is  to  be  examined. 
If  their  greatness  seldom  elevates,  their  acuteness  often  surprises ; 
if  the  imagination  is  not  always  gratified,  at  least  the  powers  of 
reflection  and  comparison  are  employed;  and  in  the  mass  of 
materials  which  ingenious  absurdity  has  thrown  together,  genuine 
wit  and  useful  knowledge  may  be  sometimes  found,  buried  per- 
haps in  grossness  of  expression,  but  useful  to  those  who  know 
their  value;   and  such  as,  when  they  are  expanded  to  perspicuity 


48  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

and  polished  to  elegance,  may  give  lustre  to  works  which  have 
more  propriety  though  less  copiousness  of  sentiment. 

This  kind  of  writing,  which  was,  I  believe,  borrowed  from 
Marino  and  his  followers,  had  been  recommended  by  the  example 
of  Donne,  a  man  of  very  extensive  and  various  knowledge;  and 
by  Jonson,  whose  manner  resembled  that  of  Donne  more  in  the 
ruggedness  of  his  lines  than  in  the  cast  of  his  sentiments. 

When  their  reputation  was  high,  they  had  undoubtedly  more 
imitators  than  time  has  left  behind.  Their  immediate  successors, 
of  whom  any  remembrance  can  be  said  to  remain,  were  Suckling, 
Waller,  Denham,  Cowley,  Cleveland,  and  Milton.  Denham 
and  Waller  sought  another  way  to  fame,  by  improving  the  harmony 
of  our  numbers.  Milton  tried  the  metaphysic  style  only  in  his 
lines  upon  Hobson  the  Carrier.  Cowley  adopted  it,  and  excelled 
his  predecessors,  having  as  much  sentiment  and  more  music. 
Suckling  neither  improved  versification,  nor  abounded  in  conceits. 
The  fashionable  style  remained  chiefly  with  Cowley;  Suckling 
could  not  reach  it,  and  Milton  disdained  it. 

Critical  remarks  are  not  easily  understood  without  examples, 
and  I  have  therefore  collected  instances  of  the  modes  of  writing 
by  which  this  species  of  poets,  for  poets  they  were  called  by  them- 
selves and  their  admirers,  was  eminently  distinguished. 

As  the  authors  of  this  race  were  perhaps  more  desirous  of  being 
admired  than  understood,  they  sometimes  drew  their  conceits 
from  recesses  of  learning  not  very  much  frequented  by  common 
readers  of  poetry.     Thus  Cowley  on  Knowledge: — • 

The  sacred  tree  midst  the  fair  orchard  grew; 

The  phoenix  Truth  did  on  it  rest, 

And  built  his  pcrfuni'd  nest, 
That  right  Porphyrian  tree  wliich  did  true  logick  shew. 

Each  leaf  did  learned  notions  give, 

And  th'  apples  were  demonstrative: 

So  clear  their  colour  and  divine, 

The  very  shade  they  cast  did  other  lights  outshine. 

On  Anacreon  continuing  a  lover  in  his  old  age :  — 

Love  was  with  thy  life  entwin'd, 

Close  as  heat  with  fire  is  join'd, 

A  powerful  brand  prescrib'd  the  date 

Of  thine,  like  Meleager's  fate. 

The  antipcristasis  of  age 

More  enflam'd  thy  amorous  rage. 


THE   METAPHYSICAL   POETS  49 

In  the  following  verses  we   have  an  allusion  to  a  Rabbinical 
opinion  concerning  Manna :  — 

Variety  I  ask  not :   give  me  one 
To  live  perpetually  upon. 
The  person  Love  does  to  us  fit, 
Like  manna,  has  the  taste  of  all  in  it. 

Thus  Donne  shows  his  medicinal  knowledge  in  some  encomi- 
astic verses: — 

In  everything  there  naturally  grows 

A  Balsamum  to  keep  it  fresh  and  new, 
If  'twere  not  injur'd  by  extrinsique  blows; 

Your  youth  and  beauty  are  this  balm  in  you. 
But  you,  of  learning  and  religion, 

And  virtue  and  such  ingredients,  have  made 
A  mithridate,  whose  operation 

Keeps  off,  or  cures  what  can  be  done  or  said. 

Though  the  following  lines  of  Donne,  on  the  last  night  of  the  year, 
have  something  in  them  too  scholastic,  they  are  not  inelegant:  — 

This  twilight  of  two  years,  not  past  nor  next, 
Some  emblem  is  of  me,  or  I  of  this, 

Who,  meteor-like,  of  stuff  and  form  perplext. 
Whose  what  and  where,  in  disputation  is, 
If  I  should  call  me  any  thing,  should  miss. 

I  sum  the  years  and  me,  and  find  me  not 
Debtor  to  th'  old,  nor  creditor  to  th'  new. 

That  cannot  say,  my  thanks  I  have  forgot. 

Nor  trust  I  this  with  hopes:    and  yet  scarce  true 
This  bravery  is,  since  these  times  shew'd  me  you. 

—  Donne. 

Yet  more  abstruse  and  profound  is  Donne's  reflection  upon 
Man  as  a  Microcosm :  — 

If  men  be  worlds,  there  is  in  every  one 
Something  to  answer  in  some  proportion 
All  the  world's  riches:    and  in  good  men,  this 
Virtue,  our  form's  form,  and  our  soul's  soul  is. 

Of  thoughts  so  far-fetched  as  to  be  not  only  unexpected  but 
unnatural,  all  their  books  are  full. 


50  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 


TO    A    LADY   WHO    WROTE   POESIES    FOR   RINGS 

They,  who  above  do  various  circles  find, 

Say,  like  a  ring  th'  equator  heaven  does  bind. 

When  heaven  shall  be  adorn'd  by  thee, 

(Which  then  more  heaven  than  'tis,  will  be) 

'Tis  thou  must  write  the  poesy  there, 

For  it  wanteth  one  as  yet, 

Though  the  sun  pass  through  't  twice  a  year, 

The  sun,  which  is  esteem'd  the  god  of  wit.  —  Cowley. 


The  difficulties  which  have  been  raised  about  identity  in  philoso- 
phy are  by  Cowley,  with  still  more  perplexity,  applied  to  Love :  — 

Five  years  ago  (says  story)  I  lov'd  you. 
For  which  you  call  me  most  inconstant  now; 
Pardon  me,  madam,  you  mistake  the  man; 
For  I  am  not  the  same  that  I  was  then; 
No  flesh  is  now  the  same  'twas  then  in  me, 
And  that  my  mind  is  chang'd  yourself  may  see. 

The  same  thoughts  to  retain  still,  and  intents. 

Were  more  inconstant  far;   for  accidents 

Must  of  all  things  most  strangely  inconstant  prove, 

If  from  one  subject  they  t'  another  move : 

My  members  then,  the  father  members  were 

From  whence  these  take  their  birth,  which  now  are  here. 

If  then  this  body  love  what  th'  other  did, 

'Twere  incest,  which  by  nature  is  forbid. 


The  love  of  different  women  is,  in  geographical  poetry,  com- 
pared to  travels,  through  different  countries :  — 

Hast  thou  not  found  each  woman's  breast 

(The  land  where  thou  hast  travelled) 
Either  by  savages  possest, 

Or  wild,  and  uninhabited  ? 

What  joy  could'st  take,  or  what  repose, 
I  In  countries  so  unciviliz'd  as  those? 

Lust,  the  scorching  dog-star,  here 

Rages  with  immoderate  heat; 
Whilst  Pride,  the  rugged  Northern  Bear, 

In  others  makes  the  cold  too  great. 
And  when  these  are  temperate  known, 
The  soil's  all  barren  sand,  or  rocky  stone.  —  Cowley. 


THE  METAPHYSICAL   POETS  51 

A  lover,  burnt  up  by  his  affections,  is  compared  to  Egypt :  — 

The  fate  of  Egypt  I  sustain, 
And  never  feel  the  dew  of  rain. 
From  clouds  which  in  the  head  appear; 
But  all  my  too  much  moisture  owe 
To  overflowings  of  the  heart  below.  —  Cowley. 

The  lover  supposes  his  lady  acquainted  with  the  ancient  laws 
of  augury  and  rites  of  sacrifice :  — 

And  yet  this  death  of  mine,  I  fear, 
Will  ominous  to  her  appear: 

When  found  in  every  other  part, 
Her  sacrifice  is  found  without  an  heart. 

For  the  last  tempest  of  my  death 
Shall  sigh  out  that  too,  with  my  breath. 

That  the  chaos  was  harmonized,  has  been  recited  of  old;  but 
whence   the  different   sounds   arose   remained    for  a  modern  to 

discover :  — 

Th'  ungovern'd  parts  no  correspondence  knew, 

And  artless  war  from  thwarting  motions  grew; 

Till  they  to  number  and  fixt  rules  were  brought. 

Water  and  air  he  for  the  Tenor  chose. 

Earth  made  the  Base,  the  Treble  flame  arose.  —  Cowley. 

The  tears  of  lovers  are  always  of  great  poetical  account,  but 
Donne  has  extended  them  into  worlds.  If  the  lines  are  not  easily 
understood,  they  may  be  read  again :  — 

On  a  round  ball 
A  workman,  that  hath  copies  by,  can  lay 
An  Europe,  Afric,  and  an  Asia, 
And  quickly  make  that,  which  was  nothing,  all. 

So  doth  each  tear. 

Which  thee  doth  wear, 
A  globe,  yea  world,  by  that  impression  grow, 
Till  thy  tears  mixt  with  mine  do  overflow 
This  world,  by  waters  sent  from  thee  my  heaven  dissolved  so. 

On  reading  the  following  lines,  the  reader  may  perhaps  cry  out, 
"Confusion  worse  confounded":  — 

Here  lies  a  she  sun,  and  a  he  moon  here, 

She  gives  the  best  light  to  his  sphere, 

Or  each  is  both,  and  all,  and  so 
They  unto  one  another  nothing  owe.  —  Donne. 


52  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

Who  but  Donne  would  have  thought  that  a  good  man  is  a 
telescope  ? 

Though  God  be  our  true  glass,  through  which  we  see 
All,  since  the  being  of  all  things  is  He, 
Yet  are  the  trunks,  which  do  to  us  derive 
Things,  in  proportion  fit,  by  perspective 
Deeds  of  good  men;   for  by  their  living  here, 
Virtues,  indeed  remote,  seem  to  be  near. 

Who  would  imagine  it  possible  that  in  a  very  few  lines  so  many 
remote  ideas  could  be  brought  together  ? 

Since  'tis  my  doom,  Love's  undershrieve, 

Why  this  reprieve? 
Why  doth  my  She  Advowson  fly 

Incumbency? 
To  sell  thyself  dost  thou  intend 

By  candle's  end, 
And  hold  the  contrast  thus  in  doubt, 

Life's  taper  out  ? 
Think  but  how  soon  the  market  fails, 
Your  sex  lives  faster  than  the  males; 
As  if  to  measure  age's  span. 
The  sober  Julian  were  th'  account  of  man. 
Whilst  you  live  by  the  fleet  Gregorian.  —  Cleveland. 

Of  enormous  and  disgusting  hyperboles,  these  may  be  exam- 
ples :  — 

By  every  wind,  that  comes  this  way. 
Send  me  at  least  a  sigh  or  two, 
Such  and  so  many  I'll  repay 
As  shall  themselves  make  winds  to  get  to  you.  —  Cowley. 

In  tears  I'll  waste  these  eyes, 
By  Love  so  vainly  fed; 
So  lust  of  old  the  Deluge  punished.  —  Cowley. 

All  arm'd  in  brass  the  richest  dress  of  war, 
(A  dismal  glorious  sight)  he  shone  afar. 
The  sun  himself  started  with  sudden  fright, 
I  To  see  his  beams  return  so  dismal  bright.  —  Cowley. 

An  universal  consternation :  — 

His  bloody  eyes  he  hurls  round,  his  sharp  paws 
Tear  up  the  ground;   then  runs  he  wild  about, 
Lashing  his  angry  tail  and  roaring  out. 


THE   METAPHYSICAL   POETS  53 

Beasts  creep  into  their  dens,  and  tremble  there; 
Trees,  though  no  wind  is  stirring,  shake  with  fear; 
Silence  and  horror  fill  the  place  around : 
Echo  itself  dares  scarce  repeat  the  sound.  —  Cowley. 

Their  fictions  were  often  violent  and  unnatural. 

OF  HIS   MISTRESS    BATHING 

The  fish  around  her  crowded,  as  they  do 

To  the  false  light  that  treacherous  fishers  shew, 

And  all  with  as  much  ease  might  taken  be, 

As  she  at  first  took  me : 

For  ne'er  did  light  so  clear 

Among  the  waves  appear, 
Though  every  night  the  sun  himself  set  there.  —  Cowley. 

The  poetical  effect  of  a  lover's  name  upon  glass :  — 

My  name  engrav'd  herein 
Doth  contribute  my  firmness  to  this  glass; 
Which,  ever  since  that  charm,  hath  been 
As  hard  as  that  which  grav'd  it  was.  —  Donne. 

Their  conceits  were  sometimes  slight  and  trifling. 

ON   AN   INCONSTANT   WOMAN 

He  enjoys  thy  calmly  sunshine  now, 

And  no  breath  stirring  hears. 
In  the  clear  heaven  of  thy  brow, 

No  smallest  cloud  appears. 

He  sees  thee  gentle,  fair  and  gay, 
And  trusts  the  faithless  April  of  thy  May.  —  Cowley. 

Upon  a  paper  written  with  the  juice  of  lemon,  and  read  by 
the  fire : — 

Nothing  yet  in  thee  is  seen : 
But  when  a  genial  heat  warms  thee  within, 
A  new-born  wood  of  various  lines  there  grows; 
Here  buds  an  L,  and  there  a  B, 
Here  sprouts  a  V,  and  there  a  T, 
And  all  the  flourishing  letters  stand  in  rows.  —  Cowley. 

As  they  sought  only  for  novelty,  they  did  not  much  inquire 
whether  their  allusions  were  to  things  high  or  low,  elegant  or  gross ; 
whether  they  compared  the  little  to  the  great,  or  the  great  to  the 
little. 


54  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 


PHYSICK    AND   CHIRURGERY    FOR    A    LOVER 

Gently,  ah  gently,  madam,  touch 

The  wound,  which  you  yourself  have  made; 
That  pain  must  needs  be  very  much, 

Which  makes  me  of  your  hand  afraid. 
Cordials  of  pity  give  me  now. 
For  I  too  weak  for  purgings  grow.  —  Cowley. 


THE   WORLD    AND    A    CLOCK 

Mahol,  th'  inferior  world's  fantastic  face, 
Through  all  the  turns  of  matter's  maze  did  trace; 
Great  Nature's  well-set  clock  in  pieces  took; 
On  all  the  springs  and  smallest  wheels  did  look 
Of  life  and  motion;   and  with  equal  art 
Made  up  again  the  whole  of  every  part.  —  Cowley. 


A  coal-pit  has  not  often  found  its  poet;    but,  that  it  may  not 
want  its  due  honour,  Cleveland  has  paralleled  it  with  the  sun :  — 

The  moderate  value  of  our  guiltless  ore 
Makes  no  man  atheist,  and  no  woman  whore; 
Yet  why  should  hallow'd  vestals'  sacred  shrine 
Deserve  more  honour  than  a  flaming  mine? 
These  pregnant  wombs  of  heat  would  fitter  be 
Than  a  few  embers,  for  a  deity. 

Had  he  our  pits,  the  Persian  would  admire 
No  sun,  but  warm's  devotion  at  our  fire: 
He'd  leave  the  trotting  whipster,  and  prefer 
Our  profound  Vulcan  'hove  that  waggoner. 
For  wants  he  heat  or  light  ?   or  would  have  store 
Of  both?   'tis  here:   and  what  can  suns  give  more? 
Nay,  what's  the  sun  but,  in  a  different  name, 
A  coal-pit  rampant,  or  a  mine  on  flame ! 
Then  let  this  truth  reciprocally  run 
The  sun's  heaven's  coalery,  and  coals  our  sun. 


DEATH,    A   VOYAGE 

No  family 
E'er  rigg'd  a  soul  for  heaven's  discovery, 
With  whom  more  venturers  might  boldly  dare 
Venture  their  stakes,  with  him  in  joy  to  share.  —  Dotme. 


THE  METAPHYSICAL  POETS  55 

Their  thoughts  and  expressions  were  sometimes  grossly  absurd, 
and  such  as  no  figures  or  hcense  can  reconcile  to  the  understanding. 

A   LOVER   NEITHER    DEAD   NOR    ALIVE 

Then  down  I  laid  my  head, 

Down  on  cold  earth ;   and  for  a  while  was  dead, 

And  my  freed  soul  to  a  strange  somewhere  fled: 

Ah,  sottish  soul,  said  I, 

When  back  to  its  cage  again  I  saw  it  fly : 

Fool  to  resume  her  broken  chain ! 

And  row  her  galley  here  again  ! 

Fool,  to  that  body  to  return 
Where  it  condemn'd  and  destin'd  is  to  burn ! 

Once  dead,  how  can  it  be. 
Death  should  a  thing  so  pleasant  seem  to  thee. 
That  thou  should'st  come  to  live  it  o'er  again  in  me  ?  —  Cowley. 

A   lover's    HEART   A  HAND   GRENADO 

Wo  to  her  stubborn  heart,  if  once  mine  come 

Into  the  self-same  room, 

'Twill  tear  and  blow  up  all  within, 
Like  a  grenado  shot  into  a  magazin. 
Then  shall  Love  keep  the  ashes,  and  torn  parts. 

Of  both  our  broken  hearts: 

Shall  out  of  both  one  new  one  make; 
From  hers  th'  allay ;   from  mine,  the  metal  take.  —  Cowley. 

THE   POETICAL    PROPAGATION    OF   LIGHT 

The  Prince's  favour  is  diffus'd  o'er  all. 

From  which  all  fortunes,  names,  and  natures  fall; 

Then  from  those  wombs  of  stars,  the  Bride's  bright  eyes, 

At  every  glance  a  constellation  flies. 
And  sows  the  court  with  stars,  and  doth  prevent 

In  light  and  power,  the  all-ey'd  firmament: 
First  her  eye  kindles  other  ladies'  eyes, 

Then  from  their  beams  their  jewels'  lustres  rise; 
And  from  their  jewels  torches  do  take  fire, 
And  all  is  warmth,  and  light,  and  good  desire.  —  Donne. 

They  were  in  very  Httle  care  to  clothe  their  notions  with  ele- 
gance of  dress,  and  therefore  miss  the  notice  and  the  praise  which 
are  often  gained  by  those  who  think  less,  but  are  more  diligent  to 
adorn  their  thoughts. 


56  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

That  a  mistress  beloved  is  fairer  in  idea  than  in  reality  is  by 
Cowley  thus  expressed :  — 

Thou  in  my  fancy  dost  much  higher  stand, 
Than  woman  can  be  plac'd  by  Nature's  hand; 
And  I  must  needs,  I'm  sure,  a  loser  be. 
To  change  thee,  as  thou'rt  there,  for  very  thee. 

That  prayer  and  labour  should  cooperate  are  thus  taught  by 
Donne :  — 

In  none  but  us,  are  such  mixt  engines  found. 
As  hands  of  double  office :   for  the  ground 
We  till  with  them;   and  them  to  heaven  we  raise; 
Who  prayerless  labours,  or  without  this,  prays, 
Doth  but  one  half,  that's  none. 

By  the  same  author,  a  common  topic,  the  danger  of  procras- 
tination, is  thus  illustrated :  — 

—  That  which  I  should  have  begun 

In  my  youth's  morning,  now  late  must  be  done; 

And  I,  as  giddy  travellers  must  do, 

Which  stray  or  sleep  all  day,  and  having  lost 

Light  and  strength,  dark  and  tir'd  must  then  ride  post. 

All  that  Man  has  to  do  is  to  live  and  die;   the  sum  of  humanity 
is  comprehended  by  Donne  in  the  following  lines :  — 

Think  in  how  poor  a  prison  thou  didst  lie; 

After,  enabled  but  to  suck  and  cry. 

Think,  when  'twas  grown  to  most,  'twas  a  poor  inn, 

A  province  pack'd  up  in  two  yards  of  skin, 

And  that  usurp'd,  or  thrcatcn'd  with  a  rage 

Of  sicknesses,  or  their  true  mother,  age. 

But  think  that  death  hath  now  enfranchis'd  thee; 

Thou  hast  thy  expansion  now,  and  liberty; 

Think,  that  a  rusty  piece  discharg'd  is  flown 

In  pieces,  and  the  bullet  is  his  own, 

And  freely  flies;    this  to  thy  soul  allow. 

Think  thy  shell  broke,  think  thy  soul  hatched  but  now. 

They  were  sometimes  indelicate  and  disgusting.     Cowley  thus 
apostrophizes  beauty :  — 

—  Thou  tyrant,  which  leav'st  no  man  free ! 

Thou  subtle  thief,  from  whom  nought  safe  can  be  1 

Thou  murtherer,  which  hast  kill'd,  and  devil,  which  would'st  damn  me. 


THE  METAPHYSICAL  POETS  57 

Thus  he  addresses  his  mistress :  — 

Thou  who,  in  many  a  propriety, 

So  truly  art  the  sun  to  me. 

Add  one  more  likeness,  which  I'm  sure  you  can, 

And  let  me  and  my  sun  beget  a  man. 

Thus  he  represents  the  meditations  of  a  lover :  — 

Though  in  thy  thoughts  scarce  any  tracts  have  been 

So  much  as  of  original  sin, 
Such  charms  thy  beauty  wears  as  might 
Desires  in  dying  confest  saints  excite. 

Thou  with  strange  adultery 
Dost  in  each  breast  a  brothel  keep; 

Awake,  all  men  do  lust  for  thee, 
And  some  enjoy  thee  when  they  sleep. 

The  true  taste  of  tears :  — 

Hither  with  crystal  vials,  lovers,  come, 

And  take  my  tears,  which  are  Love's  wine. 
And  try  your  mistress'  tears  at  home; 

For  all  are  false,  that  taste  not  just  like  mine.  —  Donne. 

This  is  yet  more  indelicate :  — 

As  the  sweet  sweat  of  roses  in  a  still 

As  that  which  from  chaf'd  musk-cat's  pores  doth  trill. 

As  th'  almighty  balm  of  th'  early  East, 

Such  are  the  sweet  drops  of  my  mistress'  breast. 

And  on  her  neck  her  skin  such  lustre  sets. 

They  seem  no  sweat-drops,  but  pearl  coronets : 

Rank  sweaty  froth  thy  mistress'  brow  defiles.  —  Donne. 

Their  expressions  sometimes  raise  horror,  when  they  intend 
perhaps  to  be  pathetic :  — 

As  men  in  hell  are  from  diseases  free, 

So  from  all  other  ills  am  I. 

Free  from  their  known  formality: 
But  all  pains  eminently  lie  in  thee.  —  Coiiiey. 

They  were  not  always  strictly  curious,  whether  the  opinions 
from  which  they  drew  their  illustrations  were  true ;  it  was  enough 
that  they  were  popular.  Bacon  remarks  that  some  falsehoods 
are  continued  by  tradition,  because  they  supply  commodious 
allusions. 


58  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

It  gave  a  piteous  groan,  and  so  it  broke; 
In  vain  it  something  would  have  spoke: 
The  love  within  too  strong  for  'twas, 
Like  poison  put  into  a  Venice-glass.  —  Cowley. 

In  forming  descriptions,  they  looked  out,  not  for  images,  but 
for  conceits.  Night  has  been  a  common  subject,  which  poets 
have  contended  to  adorn.  Dryden's  Night  is  well  known;  Donne's 
is  as  follows :  — 

Thou  seest  me  here  at  midnight,  now  all  rest: 
Time's  dead  low- water;   when  all  minds  divest 
To-morrow's  business,  when  the  labourers  have 
Such  rest  in  bed,  that  their  last  church-yard  grave, 
Subject  to  change,  will  scarce  be  a  type  of  this; 
Now  when  the  client,  whose  last  hearing  is 
To-morrow,  sleeps;   when  the  condemned  man. 
Who  when  he  opes  his  eyes,  must  shut  them  then 
Again  by  death,  although  sad  watch  he  keep, 
Doth  practise  dying  by  a  little  sleep, 
Thou  at  this  midnight  seest  me. 

It  must  be,  however,  confessed  of  these  writers  that  if  thev  are 
upon  common  subjects  often  unnecessarily  and  unpoeticallv 
subtle,  yet  where  scholastic  speculation  can  be  properly  admitted, 
their  copiousness  and  acuteness  may  justly  be  admired.  What 
Cowley  has  written  upon  Hope  shows  an  unequalled  fertility  of 
invention :  — 

Hope,  whose  weak  being  ruin'd  is. 

Alike  if  it  succeed,  and  if  it  miss; 
Whom  good  or  ill  does  equally  confound, 
And  both  the  horns  of  Fate's  dilemma  wound. 

Vain  shadow,  which  dost  vanish  quite, 

Both  at  full  noon  and  perfect  night ! 

The  stars  have  not  a  possibility 

Of  blessing  thee; 
If  things  then  from  their  end  we  happy  call, 
'Tis  hope  is  the  most  hopeless  thing  of  all. 

Hope,  thou  bold  taster  of  delight, 

Who,  whilst  thou  shouldst  but  taste,  devour'st  it  quite ! 

Thou  bring'st  us  an  estate,  yet  leav'st  us  poor, 

By  clogging  it  with  legacies  before ! 

The  joys,  which  we  entire  should  wed. 

Come  deflower'd  virgins  to  our  bed; 
Good  fortune  without  gain  imported  be. 

Such  mighty  customs  paid  to  thee: 
For  joy,  like  wine,  kept  close  does  better  taste; 
If  it  take  air  before,  its  spirits  waste. 


THE  METAPHYSICAL  POETS  59 

To  the  following  comparison  of  a  man  that  travels  and  his 
wife  that  stays  at  home,  with  a  pair  of  compasses,  it  may  be  doubted 
whether  absurdity  or  ingenuity  has  the  better  claim :  — 

Our  two  souls  therefore,  which  are  one, 

Though  I  must  go,  endure  not  yet 
A  breach,  but  an  expansion, 

Like  gold  to  airy  thinness  beat. 

If  they  be  two,  they  are  two  so 

As  stiff  twin-compasses  are  two, 
Thy  soul,  the  fixt  foot,  makes  no  show 

To  move,  but  doth,  if  th'  other  do. 

And  though  it  in  the  centre  sit. 

Yet  when  the  other  far  doth  roam, 
It  leans,  and  hearkens  after  it. 

And  grows  erect,  as  that  comes  home. 

Such  wilt  thou  be  to  me,  who  must 

Like  th'  other  foot,  obliquely  run. 
Thy  firmness  makes  my  circle  just. 

And  makes  me  end  where  I  begun.  —  Donne. 

In  all  these  examples  it  is  apparent  that  whatever  is  improper 
or  vicious  is  produced  by  a  voluntary  deviation  from  nature  in 
pursuit  of  something  new  and  strange,  and  that  the  writers  fail 
to  give  delight  by  their  desire  of  exciting  admiration. 


IV 

THOMAS  BABINGTON  MACAULAY 

(1800-1859) 

MR.    ROBERT   MONTGOMERY'S    POEMS 

[Appeared  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  for  April,  1830,  as  a  criticism  of  the  follow- 
ing books: 

1.  The  Omnipresence  oj  the  Deity:  a  Poem.    By  Robert  Montgomery.    Eleventh 

Edition.     London:  1830. 

2.  Satan:  a  Poem.    By  Robert  Montgomery.    Second  Edition.    London:  1830.] 

The  wise  men  of  antiquity  loved  to  convey  instruction  under 
the  covering  of  apologue;  and  though  this  practice  is  generally 
thought  childish,  w^e  shall  make  no  apology  for  adopting  it  on 
the  present  occasion.  A  generation  which  has  bought  eleven 
editions  of  a  poem  by  Mr.  Robert  Montgomery  may  well  con- 
descend to  listen  to  a  fable  of  Pilpay. 

A  pious  Brahmin,  it  is  written,  made  a  vow  that  on  a  certain 
day  he  would  sacrifice  a  sheep,  and  on  the  appointed  morning  he 
went  forth  to  buy  one.  There  lived  in  his  neighbourhood  three 
rogues  who  knew  of  his  vow,  and  laid  a  scheme  for  profiting  by  it. 
The  first  met  him  and  said,  "  Oh  Brahmin,  wilt  thou  buy  a  sheep  ? 
I  have  one  fit  for  sacrifice."  "It  is  for  that  very  purpose,"  said 
the  holy  man,  "that  I  came  forth  this  day."  Then  the  impostor 
opened  a  bag,  and  brought  out  of  it  an  unclean  beast,  an  ugly 
dog,  lame  and  blind.  Thereon  the  Brahmin  cried  out,  "Wretch, 
who  touchcst  things  impure,  and  utterest  things  untrue;  callest 
thou  that  cur  a  sheep?"  "Truly,"  answered  the  other,  "it  is  a 
sheep  of  the  finest  fleece,  and  of  the  sweetest  flesh.  Oh  Brahmin, 
it  will  be  an  offering  most  acceptable  to  the  gods."  "Friend," 
said  the  Brahmin,  "either  thou  or  I  must  be  blind." 

Just  then  one  of  the  accomplices  came  up.  "Praised  be  the 
gods,"  said  the  second  rogue,  "that  I  have  been  saved  the  trouble 
of  going  to  the  market  for  a  sheep  !     This  is  such  a  sheep  as  I 

60 


MR.    ROBERT  MONTGOMERY'S  POEMS  6l 

wanted.  For  how  much  wilt  thou  sell  it  ?  "  When  the  Brahmin 
heard  this,  his  mind  waved  to  and  fro,  like  one  swinging  in  the 
air  at  a  holy  festival.  "Sir,"  said  he  to  the  newcomer,  "take 
heed  what  thou  dost ;  this  is  no  sheep,  but  an  unclean  cur."  "  Oh 
Brahmin,"  said  the  newcomer,  "thou  art  drunk  or  mad!" 

At  this  time  the  third  confederate  drew  near.  "Let  us  ask  this 
man,"  said  the  Brahmin,  "what  the  creature  is,  and  I  will  stand 
by  what  he  shall  say."  To  this  the  others  agreed;  and  the 
Brahmin  called  out,  "  Oh  stranger,  what  dost  thou  call  this  beast  ?" 
"Surely,  oh  Brahmin,"  said  the  knave,  "it  is  a  fine  sheep."  Then 
the  Brahmin  said,  "Surely  the  gods  have  taken  away  my  senses;" 
and  he  asked  pardon  of  him  who  carried  the  dog,  and  bought  it 
for  a  measure  of  rice  and  a  pot  of  ghee,  and  offered  it  up  to  the 
gods,  who,  being  wroth  at  this  unclean  sacrifice,  smote  him  with 
a  sore  disease  in  all  his  joints. 

Thus,  or  nearly  thus,  if  we  remember  rightly,  runs  the  story 
of  the  Sanscrit  /Esop.  The  moral,  like  the  moral  of  every  fable 
that  is  worth  the  telling,  lies  on  the  surface.  The  writer  evidently 
means  to  caution  us  against  the  practices  of  puffers,  a  class  of 
people  who  have  more  than  once  talked  the  public  into  the  most 
absurd  errors,  but  who  surely  never  played  a  more  curious  or  a 
more  difficult  trick  than  when  they  passed  Mr.  Robert  Mont- 
goniery  off  upon  the  world  as  a  great  poet. 

In  an  age  in  which  there  are  so  few  readers  that  a  writer  cannot 
subsist  on  the  sum  arising  from  the  sale  of  his  works,  no  man 
who  has  not  an  independent  fortune  can  devote  himself  to  literary 
pursuits,  unless  he  is  assisted  by  patronage.  In  such  an  age, 
accordingly,  men  of  letters  too  often  pass  their  lives  in  danghng 
at  the  heels  of  the  wealthy  and  powerful ;  and  all  the  faults  which 
dependence  tends  to  produce,  pass  into  their  character.  They 
become  the  parasites  and  slaves  of  the  great.  It  is  melancholy 
to  think  how  many  of  the  highest  and  most  exquisitely  formed  of 
human  intellects  have  been  condemned  to  the  ignominious  labour 
of  disposing  the  commonplaces  of  adulation  in  new  forms  and 
brightening  them  into  new  splendour.  Horace  invoking  Augustus 
in  the  most  enthusiastic  language  of  religious  veneration;  Statius 
flattering  a  tyrant,  and  the  minion  of  a  tyrant,  for  a  morsel  of 
bread;  Ariosto  versifying  the  whole  genealogy  of  a  niggardly 
patron ;  Tasso  extolling  the  heroic  virtues  of  the  wretched  creature 
who  locked  him  up  in  a  madhouse:  these  are  but  a  few  of  the 
instances  which  might  easily  be  given  of  the  degradation  to  which 


62  THOMAS  BABINGTON  MACAU  LAY 

those  must  submit  who,  not  possessing  a  competent  fortune,  are 
resolved  to  write  when  there  are  scarcely  any  who  read. 

This  evil  the  progress  of  the  human  mind  tends  to  remove.  As 
a  taste  for  books  becomes  more  and  more  common,  the  patronage  of 
individuals  becomes  less  and  less  necessary.  In  the  middle  of  the 
last  century  a  marked  change  took  place.  The  tone  of  literary 
men,  both  in  this  country  and  in  France,  became  higher  and 
more  independent.  Pope  boasted  that  he  was  the  "one  poet" 
who  had  "pleased  by  manly  ways";  he  derided  the  soft  dedica- 
tions with  which  Halifax  had  been  fed,  asserted  his  own  superi- 
ority over  the  pensioned  Boileau,  and  gloried  in  being  not  the 
follower,  but  the  friend,  of  nobles  and  princes.  The  explanation 
of  all  this  is  very  simple.  Pope  was  the  first  Englishman  who, 
by  the  mere  sale  of  his  writings,  realized  a  sum  which  enabled  him 
to  live  in  comfort  and  in  perfect  independence.  Johnson  extols 
him  for  the  magnanimity  which  he  showed  in  inscribing  his  Iliad, 
not  to  a  minister  or  a  peer,  but  to  Congreve.  In  our  time  this  would 
scarcely  be  a  subject  for  praise.  Nobody  is  astonished  when  Mr. 
Moore  pays  a  compliment  of  this  kind  to  Sir  Walter  Scott,  or 
Sir  Walter  Scott  to  Mr.  Moore.  The  idea  of  either  of  those  gentle- 
men looking  out  for  some  lord  who  would  be  likely  to  give  him 
a  few  guineas  in  return  for  a  fulsome  dedication  seems  laughably 
incongruous.  Yet  this  is  exactly  what  Dryden  or  Otway  would 
have  done;  and  it  would  be  hard  to  blame  them  for  it.  Otway 
is  said  to  have  been  choked  with  a  piece  of  bread  which  he  de- 
voured in  the  rage  of  hunger;  and,  whether  this  story  be  true  or 
false,  he  was  beyond  all  question  miserably  poor.  Dryden,  at 
near  seventy,  when  at  the  head  of  the  literary  men  of  England, 
without  equal  or  second,  received  three  hundred  pounds  for  his 
Fables,  a  collection  of  ten  thousand  verses,  and  of  such  verses  as 
no  man  then  living,  except  himself,  could  have  produced.  Pope, 
at  thirty,  had  laid  up  between  six  and  seven  thousand  pounds, 
the  fruits  of  his  poetry.  It  was  not,  we  suspect,  because  he  had 
a  higher  spirit  or  a  more  scrupulous  conscience  than  his  prede- 
cessors, but  because  he  had  a  larger  income,  that  he  kept  up  the 
dignity  of  the  literary  character  so  much  better  than  they  had 
done. 

From  the  time  of  Pope  to  the  present  day  the  readers  have  been 
constantly  becoming  more  and  more  numerous,  and  the  writers, 
consequently,  more  and  more  independent.  It  is  assuredly  a 
great  evil  that  men,  fitted  by  their  talents  and  acquirements  to 


MR.  ROBERT   MONTGOMERY'S  POEMS  63 

enlighten  and  charm  the  world,  should  be  reduced  to  the  necessity 
of  flattering  wicked  and  foolish  patrons  in  return  for  the  suste- 
nance of  life.  But,  though  we  heartily  rejoice  that  this  evil  is 
removed,  we  cannot  but  see  with  concern  that  another  evil  has 
succeeded  to  it.  The  public  is  now  the  patron,  and  a  most  liberal 
patron.  All  that  the  rich  and  powerful  bestowed  on  authors 
from  the  time  of  Maecenas  to  that  of  Harley  would  not,  we  appre- 
hend, make  up  a  sum  equal  to  that  which  has  been  paid  by  English 
booksellers  to  authors  during  the  last  fifty  years.  Men  of  letters 
have  accordingly  ceased  to  court  individuals,  and  have  begun  to 
court  the  public.  They  formerly  used  flattery.  They  now  use 
puffing. 

Whether  the  old  or  the  new  vice  be  the  worse,  whether  those 
who  formerly  lavished  insincere  praise  on  others,  or  those  who 
now  contrive  by  every  art  of  beggary  and  bribery  to  stun  the  public 
with  praises  of  themselves,  disgrace  their  vocation  the  more  deeply, 
we  shall  not  attempt  to  decide.  But  of  this  we  are  sure,  that  it  is 
high  time  to  make  a  stand  against  the  new  trickery.  The  puff- 
ing of  books  is  now  so  shamefully  and  so  successfully  carried  on 
that  it  is  the  duty  of  all  who  are  anxious  for  the  purity  of  the  national 
taste,  or  for  the  honour  of  the  literary  character,  to  join  in  dis- 
countenancing the  practice.  All  the  pens  that  ever  were  employed 
in  magnifying  Bish's  lucky  oifice,  Romanis's  fleecy  hosiery,  Pack- 
wood's  razor  strops,  and  Rowland's  Kalydor,  all  the  placard- 
bearers  of  Dr.  Eady,  all  the  wall-chalkers  of  Day  and  Martin, 
seem  to  have  taken  service  with  the  poets  and  novelists  of  this 
generation.  Devices  which  in  the  lowest  trades  are  considered  as 
disreputable  are  adopted  without  scruple,  and  improved  upon 
with  a  despicable  ingenuity,  by  people  engaged  in  a  pursuit  which 
never  was  and  never  will  be  considered  as  a  mere  trade  by  any 
man  of  honour  and  virtue.  A  butcher  of  the  higher  class  disdains 
to  ticket  his  meat.  A  mercer  of  the  higher  class  would  be  ashamed 
to  hang  up  papers  in  his  window  inviting  the  passers-by  to  look 
at  the  stock  of  a  bankrupt,  all  of  the  first  quality,  and  going  for 
half  the  value.  We  expect  some  reserve,  some  decent  pride,  in 
our  hatter  and  our  bootmaker.  But  no  artifice  by  which  notoriety 
can  be  obtained  is  thought  too  abject  for  a  man  of  letters. 

It  is  amusing  to  think  over  the  history  of  most  of  the  publica- 
tions which  have  had  a  run  during  the  last  few  years.  The  pub- 
lisher is  often  the  publisher  of  some  periodical  work.  In  this 
periodical  work  the  first  flourish  of  trumpets  is  sounded.     The 


64  THOMAS  BABINGTON   MACAU  LAY 

peal  is  then  echoed  and  reechoed  by  all  the  other  periodical 
works  over  which  the  publisher,  or  the  author,  or  the  author's 
coterie,  may  have  any  influence.  The  newspapers  are  for  a 
fortnight  filled  with  puffs  of  all  the  various  kinds  which  Sheridan 
enumerated,  direct,  oblique,  and  collusive.  Sometimes  the  praise 
is  laid  on  thick  for  simple-minded  [)eopIe.  "Pathetic,"  "sub- 
lime," "splendid,"  "graceful,"  "brilliant  wit,"  "exquisite  hu- 
mour," and  other  phrases  equally  flattering,  fall  in  a  shower  as 
thick  and  as  sweet  as  the  sugar-plums  at  a  Roman  carnival. 
Sometimes  greater  art  is  used.  A  sinecure  has  been  offered  to 
the  writer  if  he  would  suppress  his  work,  or  if  he  would  even 
soften  down  a  few  of  his  incomparable  portraits.  A  distinguished 
military  and  political  character  has  challenged  the  inimitable 
satirist  of  the  vices  of  the  great;  and  the  puffer  is  glad  to  learn 
that  the  parties  have  been  bound  over  to  keep  the  peace.  Some- 
times it  is  thought  expedient  that  the  puffer  should  put  on  a  grave 
face,  and  utter  his  panegyric  in  the  form  of  admonition.  "Such 
attacks  on  private  character  cannot  be  too  much  condemned. 
Even  the  exuberant  wit  of  our  author,  and  the  irresistible  power 
of  his  withering  sarcasm,  are  no  excuses  for  that  utter  disregard 
which  he  manifests  for  the  feelings  of  others.  We  cannot  but 
wonder  that  a  writer  of  such  transcendent  talents,  a  writer  who 
is  evidently  no  stranger  to  the  kindly  charities  and  sensibilities 
of  our  nature,  should  show  so  little  tenderness  to  the  foibles  of 
noble  and  distinguished  individuals,  with  whom  it  is  clear,  from 
every  page  of  his  work,  that  he  must  have  been  constantly  mingling 
in  society."  These  are  but  tame  and  feeble  imitations  of  the 
paragraphs  with  which  the  daily  papers  are  filled  whenever  an 
attorney's  clerk  or  an  apothecary's  assistant  undertakes  to  tell 
the  public  in  bad  English  and  worse  French,  how  people  tie  their 
neckcloths  and  eat  their  dinners  in  Grosvenor  Square.  The 
editors  of  the  higher  and  more  respectable  newspapers  usually 
prefix  the  words  "Advertisement,"  or  "From  a  Correspondent," 
to  such  paragraphs.  But  this  makes  little  difference.  The 
panegyric  is  extracted,  and  the  significant  heading  omitted.  The 
fulsome  eulogy  makes  its  appearance  on  the  covers  of  all  the  Re- 
views and  Magazines,  with  Times  or  Globe  afiixed,  though  the 
editors  of  the  Times  and  the  Globe  have  no  more  to  do  with  it 
than  with  Mr.  Goss's  way  of  making  old  rakes  young  again. 

That  people  who  live  by  personal  slander  should  practise  these 
arts  is  not  surjjrising.     Those  who  stoop  to  write  calumnious 


MR.  ROBERT   MONTGOMERY'S  POEMS  65 

books  may  well  stoop  to  puff  them;  and  that  the  basest  of  all 
trades  should  be  carried  on  in  the  basest  of  all  manners  is  quite 
proper  and  as  it  should  be.  But  how  any  man  who  has  the  least 
self-respect,  the  least  regard  for  his  own  personal  dignity,  can  con- 
descend to  persecute  the  public  with  this  Rag-fair  importunity, 
we  do  not  understand.  Extreme  poverty  may,  indeed,  in  some 
degree,  be  an  excuse  for  employing  these  shifts,  as  it  may  be  an 
excuse  for  stealing  a  leg  of  mutton.  But  we  really  think  that  a 
man  of  spirit  and  delicacy  would  quite  as  soon  satisfy  his  wants 
in  the  one  way  as  in  the  other. 

It  is  no  excuse  for  an  author  that  the  praises  of  journalists  are 
procured  by  the  money  or  influence  of  his  publishers,  and  not 
by  his  own.  It  is  his  business  to  take  such  precautions  as  may 
prevent  others  from  doing  what  must  degrade  him.  It  is  for  his 
honour  as  a  gentleman,  and,  if  he  is  really  a  man  of  talents,  it  will 
eventually  be  for  his  honour  and  interest  as  a  writer,  that  his 
works  should  come  before  the  public  recommended  by  their  own 
merits  alone,  and  should  be  discussed  with  perfect  freedom.  If 
his  objects  be  really  such  as  he  may  own  without  shame,  he  will 
find  that  they  will,  in  the  long-run,  be  better  attained  by  suffering 
the  voice  of  criticism  to  be  fairly  heard.  At  present,  we  too  often 
see  a  writer  attempting  to  obtain  literary  fame  as  Shakespeare's 
usurper  obtains  sovereignty.  The  publisher  plays  Buckingham 
to  the  author's  Richard.  Some  few  creatures  of  the  conspiracy 
are  dexterously  disposed  here  and  there  in  the  crowd.  It  is  the 
business  of  these  hirelings  to  throw  up  their  caps,  and  clap  their 
hands,  and  utter  their  vivas.  The  rabble  at  first  stare  and  wonder, 
and  at  last  join  in  shouting  for  shouting's  sake ;  and  thus  a  crown 
is  placed  on  a  head  which  has  no  right  to  it,  by  the  huzzas  of  a 
few  servile  dependants. 

The  opinion  of  the  great  body  of  the  reading  public  is  very 
materially  influenced  even  by  the  unsupported  assertions  of  those 
who  assume  a  right  to  criticise.  Nor  is  the  public  altogether  to 
blame  on  this  account.  Most  even  of  those  who  have  really  a 
great  enjoyment  in  reading  are  in  the  same  state,  with  respect  to 
a  book,  in  which  a  man  who  has  never  given  particular  attention 
to  the  art  of  painting  is  with  respect  to  a  picture.  Every  man 
who  has  the  least  sensibility  or  imagination  derives  a  certain 
pleasure  from  pictures.  Yet  a  man  of  the  highest  and  finest 
intellect  might,  unless  he  had  formed  his  taste  by  contemplating 
the  best  pictures,  be  easily  persuaded  by  a  knot  of  connoisseurs 

F 


66  THOMAS  BABINGTON   MACAU  LAY 

that  the  worst  daub  in  Somerset  House  was  a  miracle  of  art  If 
he  deserves  to  be  laughed  at,  it  is  not  for  his  ignorance  of  pictures, 
but  for  his  ignorance  of  men.  He  knows  that  there  is  a  dehcacy 
of  taste  in  painting  which  he  does  not  possess,  that  he  cannot  dis- 
tinguish hands,  as  practised  judges  distinguish  them,  that  he  is 
not  familiar  with  the  finest  models,  that  he  has  never  looked  at  them 
with  close  attention,  and  that,  when  the  general  effect  of  a  piece 
has  pleased  him  or  displeased  him,  he  has  never  troubled  himself 
to  ascertain  why.  When,  therefore,  people,  whom  he  thinks 
more  competent  to  judge  than  himself,  and  of  whose  sincerity  he 
entertains  no  doubt,  assure  him  that  a  particular  work  is  exqui- 
sitely beautiful,  he  takes  it  for  granted  that  they  must  be  in  the 
right.  He  returns  to  the  examination,  resolved  to  find  or  imagine 
beauties;  and,  if  he  can  work  himself  up  into  something  like 
admiration,  he  exults  in  his  own  proficiency. 

Just  such  is  the  manner  in  which  nine  readers  out  of  ten  judge 
of  a  book.  They  are  ashamed  to  dislike  what  men  who  speak 
as  having  authority  declare  to  be  good.  At  present,  however 
contemptible  a  poem  or  a  novel  may  be,  there  is  not  the  least  diffi- 
culty in  procuring  favourable  notices  of  it  from  all  sorts  of  pub- 
lications, daily,  weekly,  and  monthly.  In  the  meantime,  little 
or  nothing  is  said  on  the  other  side.  The  author  and  the  publisher 
are  interested  in  crying  up  the  book.  Nobody  has  any  very  strong 
interest  in  crying  it  down.  Those  who  are  best  fitted  to  guide 
the  public  opinion  think  it  beneath  them  to  expose  mere  nonsense, 
and  comfort  themselves  by  reflecting  that  such  popularity  cannot 
last.  This  contemptuous  lenity  has  been  carried  too  far.  It  is 
perfectly  true  that  reputations  which  have  been  forced  into  an 
unnatural  bloom  fade  almost  as  soon  as  they  have  expanded; 
nor  have  we  any  apprehensions  that  puffing  will  ever  raise  any 
scribbler  to  the  rank  of  a  classic.  It  is  indeed  amusing  to  turn 
over  some  late  volumes  of  periodical  works,  and  to  see  how  many 
immortal  productions  have,  within  a  few  months,  been  gathered 
to  the  Poems  of  Jilackmore  and  the  novels  of  Mrs.  Behn;  how 
many  "profound  views  of  human  nature,"  and  "exquisite  delinea- 
tions of  fashionable  manners,"  and  "vernal,  and  sunny,  and 
refreshing  thoughts,"  and  "high  imaginings,"  and  "young  breath- 
ings," and  "embodyings,"  and  "pinings,"  and  "minglings  with 
the  beauty  of  the  universe,"  and  "harmonies  which  dissolve  the 
soul  in  a  passionate  sense  of  loveliness  and  divinity,"  the  world 
has  contrived  to  forget.     The  names  of  the  books  and  of  the 


MR.  LOBERT   MONTGOMERY'S  POEMS  67 

writers  are  buried  in  as  deep  an  oblivion  as  the  name  of  the  builder 
of  Stonehenge.  Some  of  the  wcll-puffcd  fashionable  novels  of 
eighteen  hundred  and  twenty-nine  hold  the  pastry  of  eighteen 
hundred  and  thirty;  and  others,  which  are  now  exlclied  in  lan- 
guage almost  too  high-flown  for  the  merits  of  Don  Quixote,  will, 
we  have  no  doubt,  line  the  trunks  of  eighteen  hundred  and  thirty- 
one.  But,  though  we  have  no  apprehensions  that  puffing  will 
ever  confer  permanent  reputation  on  the  undeserving,  we  still 
think  its  influence  most  pernicious.  Men  of  real  merit  will,  if 
they  persevere,  at  last  reach  the  station  to  which  they  are  entitled, 
and  intruders  will  be  ejected  with  contempt  and  derision.  But 
it  is  no  small  evil  that  the  avenues  to  fame  should  be  blocked  up 
by  a  swarm  of  noisy,  pushing,  elbowing  pretenders,  who,  though 
they  will  not  ultimately  be  able  to  make  good  their  own  entrance, 
hinder,  in  the  meantime,  those  who  have  a  right  to  enter.  All 
who  will  not  disgrace  themselves  by  joining  in  the  unseemly 
scuffle  must  expect  to  be  at  first  hustled  and  shouldered  back. 
Some  men  of  talents,  accordingly,  turn  away  in  dejection  from 
pursuits  in  which  success  appears  to  bear  no  proportion  to  desert. 
Others  employ  in  self-defence  the  means  by  which  competitors, 
far  inferior  to  themselves,  appear  for  a  time  to  obtain  a  decided 
advantage.  There  are  few  who  have  sufficient  confidence  in 
their  own  powers  and  sufficient  elevation  of  mind,  to  wait  with 
secure  and  contemptuous  patience,  while  dunce  after  dunce  presses 
before  them.  Those  who  will  not  stoop  to  the  baseness  of  the 
modern  fashion  are  too  often  discouraged.  Those  who  do  stoop 
to  it  are  always  degraded. 

We  have  of  late  observed  wnth  great  pleasure  some  symptoms 
which  lead  us  to  hope  that  respectable  literary  men  of  all  parties 
are  beginning  to  be  impatient  of  this  insufferable  nuisance.  And 
we  purpose  to  do  what  in  us  lies  for  the  abating  of  it.  We  do  not 
think  that  we  can  more  usefully  assist  in  this  good  work  than  by 
showing  our  honest  countrymen  what  that  sort  of  poetry  is  which 
puffing  can  drive  through  eleven  editions,  and  how  easily  any 
bellman  might,  if  a  bellman  would  stoop  to  the  necessary  degree 
of  meanness,  become  a  "master-spirit  of  the  age."  We  have  no 
enmity  to  Mr.  Robert  Montgomery.  We  know  nothing  whatever 
about  him,  except  what  we  have  learned  from  his  books,  and 
from  the  portrait  prefixed  to  one  of  them,  in  which  he  appears  to 
be  doing  his  very  best  to  look  like  a  man  of  genius  and  sensibility, 
though  with  less  success  than  his  strenuous  exertions  deserve. 


68  THOMAS  BABINGTON   MACAU  LAY 

We  select  him,  because  his  works  have  received  more  enthusiastic 
praise,  and  have  deserved  more  unmixed  contempt,  than  any 
which,  as  far  as  our  knowledge  extends,  have  appeared  within  the 
last  three  or  four  years.  His  writing  bears  the  same  relation  to 
poetry  which  a  Turkey  carpet  bears  to  a  picture.  There  are 
colours  in  the  Turkey  carpet  out  of  which  a  picture  might  be  made. 
There  are  words  in  Mr.  Montgomery's  writing  which,  when  dis- 
posed in  certain  orders  and  combinations,  have  made,  and  will 
again  make,  good  poetry.  But,  as  they  now  stand,  they  seem  to  be 
put  together  on  principle  in  such  a  manner  as  to  give  no  image  of 
anything  "in  the  heaven  above,  or  in  the  earth  beneath,  or  in  the 
waters  under  the  earth." 

The  poem  on  the  Omnipresence  of  the  Deity  commences  with 
a  description  of  the  creation,  in  which  we  can  find  only  one  thought 
which  has  the  least  pretension  to  ingenuity,  and  that  one  thought 
is  stolen  from  Dryden,  and  marred  in  the  stealing :  — 

"Last,  softly  beautiful,  as  music's  close, 
Angelic  woman  into  being  rose." 

The  all-pervading  influence  of  the  Supreme  Being  is  then  described 
in  a  few  tolerable  lines  borrowed  from  Pope,  and  a  great  many 
intolerable  lines  of  Mr.  Robert  Montgomery's  own.  The  follow- 
ing may  stand  as  a  specimen :  — 

"  But  who  could  trace  Thine  unrestricted  course, 
Though  Fancy  followed  with  immortal  force  ? 
There's  not  a  blossom  fondled  by  the  breeze, 
There's  not  a  fruit  that  beautifies  the  trees, 
There's  not  a  particle  in  sea  or  air, 
But  nature  owns  thy  plastic  influence  there ! 
With  fearful  gaze,  still  be  it  mine  to  see 
How  all  is  fill'd  and  vivified  by  Thee; 
Upon  thy  mirror,  earth's  majestic  view, 
To  paint  Thy  Presence,  and  to  feel  it  too." 

The  last  two  lines  contain  an  excellent  specimen  of  Mr.  Robert 
Montgomery's  Turkey  carpet  style  of  writing.  The  majestic 
view  of  earth  is  the  mirror  of  God's  presence;  and  on  this  mirror 
Mr.  Robert  Montgomery  paints  God's  presence.  The  use  of  a 
mirror,  we  submit,  is  not  to  be  painted  upon. 

A  few  more  lines,  as  bad  as  those  which  we  have  quoted,  bring 
us  to  one  of  the  most  amusing  instances  of  literary  pilfering  which 
we  remember.     It  might  be  of  use  to  plagiarists  to  know,  as  a 


MR.   ROBERT  MONTGOMERY'S  POEMS  69 

general  rule,  that  what  they  steal  is,  to  employ  a  phrase  common 
in  advertisements,  of  no  use  to  any  but  the  right  owner.  We  never 
fell  in,  however,  with  any  plunderer  who  so  little  understood  how 
to  turn  his  booty  to  good  account  as  Mr.  Montgomery.  Lord 
Byron,  in  a  passage  which  everybody  knows  by  heart,  has  said,, 
addressing  the  sea, 

"Time  writes  no  wrinkle  on  thine  azure  brow." 

Mr.  Robert  Montgomery  very  coolly  appropriates  the  image  and 
reproduces  the  stolen  goods  in  the  following  form :  — 

"And  thou,  vast  Ocean,  on  whose  awful  face 
Time's  iron  feet  can  print  no  ruin -trace." 

So  may  such  ill-got  gains  ever  prosper ! 

The  effect  which  the  Ocean  has  on  Atheists  is  then  described 
in  the  following  lofty  lines :  — 

"  Oh  !   never  did  the  dark-soul'd  Atheist  stand, 
And  watch  the  breakers  boiling  on  the  strand, 
And,  while  Creation  stagger'd  at  his  nod, 
Mock  the  dread  presence  of  the  mighty  God ! 
We  hear  Him  in  the  wind-heaved  ocean's  roar, 
Hurling  her  billowy  crags  upon  the  shore; 
We  hear  Him  in  the  riot  of  the  blast. 
And  shake,  while  rush  the  raving  whirlwinds  past !" 

If  Mr.  Robert  Montgomery's  genius  were  not  far  too  free  and 
aspiring  to  be  shackled  by  the  rules  of  syntax,  we  should  suppose 
that  it  "is  at  the  nod  of  the  Atheist  that  creation  staggers.  But 
Mr.  Robert  Montgomery's  readers  must  take  such  grammar  as 
they  can  get,  and  be  thankful. 

A  few  more  lines  bring  us  to  another  instance  of  unprofitable 
theft.     Sir  Walter  Scott  has  these  lines  in  the  Lord  of  the  Isles:  — 

"The  dew  that  on  the  violet  lies, 
Mocks  the  dark  lustre  of  thine  eyes." 

This  is  pretty  taken  separately,  and,  as  is  always  the  case  with  the 
good  things  of  good  writers,  much  prettier  in  its  place  than  can 
even  be  conceived  by  those  who  see  it  only  detached  from  the 
context.     Now  for  Mr.  Montgomery :  — 

"And  the  bright  dew-bead  on  the  bramble  lies, 
Like  liquid  rapture  upon  beauty's  eyes." 


7o  THOMAS  BABINGTON   MACAU  LAY 

The  comparison  of  a  violet,  bright  with  the  dew,  to  a  woman's  eyes, 
is  as  perfect  as  a  comparison  can  be.  Sir  Walter's  lines  are  part 
of  a  song  addressed  to  a  woman  at  daybreak,  when  the  violets  are 
bathed  in  dew;  and  the  comparison  is  therefore  peculiarly  natural 
and  graceful.  Dew  on  a  bramble  is  no  more  like  a  woman's 
eyes  than  dew  anywhere  else.  There  is  a  very  pretty  Eastern 
tale  of  which  the  fate  of  plagiarists  often  reminds  us.  The  slave 
of  a  magician  saw  his  master  wave  his  wand,  and  heard  him  give 
orders  to  the  spirits  who  arose  at  the  summons.  The  slave  stole 
the  wand,  and  waved  it  himself  in  the  air ;  but  he  had  not  observed 
that  his  master  used  the  left  hand  for  that  purpose.  The  spirits 
thus  irregularly  summoned  tore  the  thief  to  pieces  instead  of 
obeying  his  orders.  There  are  very  few  who  can  safely  venture 
to  conjure  with  the  rod  of  Sir  Walter;  and  Mr.  Robert  Mont- 
gomery is  not  one  of  them. 

Mr.  Campbell,  in  one  of  his  most  pleasing  pieces,  has  this  line, 

"The  sentinel  stars  set  their  watch  in  the  sky." 

The  thought  is  good,  and  has  a  very  striking  propriety  where  Mr. 
Campbell  has  placed  it,  in  the  mouth  of  a  soldier  telling  his  dream. 
But,  though  Shakespeare  assures  us  that  "every  true  man's  apparel 
fits  your  thief,"  it  is  by  no  means  the  case,  as  we  have  already 
seen,  that  every  true  poet's  similitude  fits  your  plagiarist.  Let 
us  see  how  Mr.  Robert  Montgomery  uses  the  image :  — 

"Ye  quenchless  stars!    so  eloquently  bright, 
Untroubled  sentries  of  the  shadowy  night, 
While  half  the  world  is  lapp'd  in  downy  dreams, 
And  round  the  lattice  creep  your  midnight  beams. 
How  sweet  to  gaze  upon  your  placid  eyes, 
In  lambent  beauty  looking  from  the  skies." 

Certainly  the  ideas  of  eloquence,  of  untroubled  repose,  of  placid 
eyes,  of  the  lambent  beauty  on  which  it  is  sweet  to  gaze,  harmo- 
nize admirably  with  the  idea  of  a  sentry. 

We  would  not  be  understood,  however,  to  .say,  that  Mr.  Robert 
Montgomery  cannot  make  similitudes  for  himself.  A  very  few 
lines  further  on,  we  find  one  which  has  every  mark  of  originality, 
and  on  which,  we  will  be  bound,  none  of  the  poets  whom  he  has 
plundered  will  ever  think  of  making  reprisals:  — 

"The  soul,  aspiring,  pants  its  source  to  mount, 
As  streams  meander  level  with  their  fount." 


MR.    ROBERT   MONTGOMERY'S  POEMS  71 

We  take  this  to  be,  on  the  whole,  the  worst  similitude  in  the 
world.  In  the  first  place,  no  stream  meanders,  or  can  possibly 
meander,  level  with  its  fount.  In  the  next  place,  if  streams  did 
meander  level  with  their  founts,  no  two  motions  can  be  less  like 
each  other  than  that  of  meandering  level  and  that  of  mounting 
upwards. 

We  have  then  an  apostrophe  to  the  Deity,  couched  in  terms 
which,  in  any  writer  who  dealt  in  meanings,  we  should  call  pro- 
fane, but  to  which  we  suppose  Mr.  Robert  Montgomery  attaches 
no  idea  whatever :  — 

"  Yes !   pause  and  think,  within  one  fleeting  hour, 
How  vast  a  universe  obeys  Thy  power; 
Unseen,  but  felt.  Thine  interfused  control 
Works  in  each  atom,  and  pervades  the  whole; 
Expands  the  blossom,  and  erects  the  tree, 
Conducts  each  vapour,  and  commands  each  sea, 
Beams  in  each  ray,  bids  whirlwinds  be  unfurl'd, 
Unrols  the  thunder,  and  upheaves  a  world!" 

No  field-preacher  surely  ever  carried  his  irreverent  familiarity 
so  far  as  to  bid  the  Supreme  Being  stop  and  think  on  the  impor- 
tance of  the  interests  which  are  under  His  care.  The  grotesque 
indecency  of  such  an  address  throws  into  shade  the  subordinate 
absurdities  of  the  passage,  the  unfurling  of  whirlwinds,  the  unroll- 
ing of  thunder,  and  the  upheaving  of  worlds. 

Then  comes  a  curious  specimen  of  our  poet's  English :  — 

"Yet  not  alone  created  realms  engage 
Thy  faultless  wisdom,  grand,  primeval  sage ! 
For  all  the  thronging  woes  to  life  allied 
Thy  mercy  tempers,  and  thy  cares  provide." 

We  should  be  glad  to  know  what  the  word  "For"  means  here. 
If  it  is  a  preposition,  it  makes  nonsense  of  the  words,  "Thy 
mercy  tempers."  If  it  is  an  adverb,  it  makes  nonsense  of  the 
words,  "Thy  cares  provide."  These  beauties  we  have  taken, 
almost  at  random,  from  the  first  part  of  the  poem.  The 
second  part  is  a  series  of  descriptions  of  various  events,  a 
battle,  a  murder,  an  execution,  a  marriage,  a  funeral,  and  so  forth. 
Mr.  Robert  Montgomery  terminates  each  of  these  descriptions 
by  assuring  us  that  the  Deity  was  present  at  the  battle,  murder, 
execution,  marriage  or  funeral  in  question.  And  this  proposition 
which  might  be  safely  predicated  of  every  event  that  ever  happened 


72  THOMAS  BABINGTON   MACAULAY 

or  ever  will  happen,  forms  the  only  link  which  connects  these 
descriptions  with  the  subject  or  with  each  other. 

How  the  descriptions  are  executed  our  readers  are  probably 
by  this  time  able  to  conjecture.  The  battle  is  made  up  of  the 
battles  of  all  ages  and  nations:  "red-mouthed  cannons,  up- 
roaring  to  the  clouds,"  and  "hands  grasping  firm  the  glittering 
shield."  The  only  military  operations  of  which  this  part  of  the 
poem  reminds  us,  are  those  which  reduced  the  Abbey  of  Qued- 
linburgh  to  submission,  the  Templar  with  his  cross,  the  Austrian 
and  Prussian  grenadiers  in  full  uniform,  and  Curtius  and  Dentatus 
with  their  battering-ram.  We  ought  not  to  pass  unnoticed  the 
slain  war-horse,  who  will  no  more 

"Roll  his  red  eye,  and  rally  for  the  fight;" 

or  the  slain  warrior  who,  while  "lying  on  his  bleeding  breast," 
contrives  to  "stare  ghastly  and  grimly  on  the  skies."  As  to  this 
last  exploit,  we  can  only  say,  as  Dante  did  on  a  similar  occasion, 

"Forse  per  forza  gia  di'  parlasia 
Si  stravolse  cosi  alcun  del  tutto: 
Ma  io  nol  vidi,  ne  credo  che  sia."  ^ 

The  tempest  is  thus  described :  — 

"But  lo !   around  the  marsh'lling  clouds  unite, 
Like  thick  battalions  halting  for  the  fight; 
The  sun  sinks  back,  the  tempest  spirits  sweep 
Fierce  through  the  air  and  flutter  on  the  deep. 
Till  from  their  caverns  rush  the  maniac  blasts, 
Tear  the  loose  sails,  and  split  the  creaking  masts, 
And  the  lash'd  billows,  rolling  in  a  train, 
Rear  their  white  heads,  and  race  along  the  main!" 

What,  we  should  like  to  know,  is  the  difference  between  the 
two  operations  which  Mr.  Robert  Montgomery  so  accurately  dis- 
tinguishes from  each  other,  the  fierce  sweeping  of  the  tempest- 
spirits  through  the  air,  and  the  rushing  of  the  maniac  blasts  from 
their  caverns?  And  why  does  the  former  operation  end  exactly 
when  the  latter  commences? 

1  ["Perchance  indeed  by  violence  of  palsy 

Some  one  has  been  thus  wholly  turned  awry; 
But  I  ne'er  saw  it,  nor  believe  it  can  be."  —  Longfellow's 
translation  of  Inferno,  XX.,   16-18.] 


MR.   ROBERT  MONTGOMERY'S  POEMS  73 

We  cannot  stop  over  each  of  Mr.  Robert  Montgomery's  descrip- 
tions. We  have  a  shipwrecked  sailor,  who  "visions  a  viewless 
temple  in  the  air";  a  murderer  who  stands  on  a  heath,  "with 
ashy  lips,  in  cold  convulsion  spread";  a  pious  man,  to  whom, 
as  he  lies  in  bed  at  night, 

"The  panorama  of  past  life  appears, 
Warms  his  pure  mind,  and  melts  it  into  tears;" 

a  traveller,  who  loses  his  way,  owing  to  the  thickness  of  the  "cloud 
battalion,"  and  the  want  of  "heaven-lamps,  to  beam  their  holy 
light."  We  have  a  description  of  a  convicted  felon,  stolen  from 
that  incomparable  passage  in  Crabbe's  Borough,  which  has  made 
many  a  rough  and  cynical  reader  cry  like  a  child.  We  can,  how- 
ever, conscientiously  declare  that  persons  of  the  most  excitable 
sensibility  may  safely  venture  upon  Mr.  Robert  Montgomery's 
version.     Then  we  have  the  "poor,  mindless,  pale-faced  maniac 

boy,"  who 

"  Rolls  his  vacant  eye, 
To  greet  the  glowing  fancies  of  the  sky." 

What  are  the  glowing  fancies  of  the  sky?  And  what  is  the 
meaning  of  the  two  lines  which  almost  immediately  follow  ? 

"A  soulless  thing,  a  spirit  of  the  woods, 
He  loves  to  commune  with  the  fields  and  floods." 

How  can  a  soulless  thing  be  a  spirit  ?  Then  comes  a  panegyric 
on  the  Sunday.  A  baptism  follows ;  after  that  a  marriage :  and 
we  then  proceed,  in  due  course,  to  the  visitation  of  the  sick,  and 
the  burial  of  the  dead. 

Often  as  Death  has  been  personified,  Mr.  Montgomery  has 
found  something  new  to  say  about  him :  — 

"  O  Death  !   thou  dreadless  vanquisher  of  earth, 
The  Elements  shrank  blasted  at  thy  birth ! 
Careering  round  the  world  like  tempest  wind, 
Martyrs  before,  and  victims  strew'd  behind; 
Ages  on  ages  cannot  grapple  thee, 
Dragging  the  world  into  eternity  !" 

If  there  be  any  one  line  in  this  passage  about  which  we  are  more 
in  the  dark  than  about  the  rest,  it  is  the  fourth.  What  the  differ- 
ence may  be  between  the  victims  and  the  martyrs,  and  why  the 


74  THOMAS  BABINGTON   MACAU  LAY 

martyrs  are  to  lie  before  Death,  and  the  victims  behind  him,  are 
to  us  great  mysteries. 

We  now  come  to  the  third  part,  of  which  we  may  say  with  honest 
Cassio,  "Why,  this  is  a  more  excellent  song  than  the  other."  Mr. 
Robert  Montgomery  is  very  severe  on  the  infidels,  and  undertakes 
to  prove,  that,  as  he  elegantly  expresses  it, 

"One  great  Enchanter  helm'd  the  harmonious  whole." 

What  an  enchanter  has  to  do  with  helming,  or  what  a  helm  has 
to  do  with  harmony,  he  does  not  explain.  He  proceeds  with  his 
argument  thus :  — 

"And  dare  men  dream  that  dismal  Chance  has  framed 
All  that  the  eye  perceives,  or  tongue  has  named; 
The  spacious  world,  and  all  its  wonders,  born 
Designless,  self-created,  and  forlorn; 
Like  to  the  flashing  bubbles  on  a  stream, 
Fire  from  the  cloud,  or  phantom  in  a  dream?" 

We  should  be  sorry  to  stake  our  faith  in  a  higher  Power  on  Mr. 
Robert  Montgomery's  logic.  He  informs  us  that  lightning  is 
designless  and  self-created.  If  he  can  believe  this,  we  cannot 
conceive  why  he  may  not  believe  that  the  whole  universe  is  design- 
less and  self-created.  A  few  lines  before,  he  tells  us  that  it  is  the 
Deity  who  bids  "thunder  rattle  from  the  skiey  deep."  His  theory 
is  therefore  this,  that  God  made  the  thunder,  but  that  the  light- 
ning made  itself. 

But  Mr.  Robert  Montgomery's  metaphysics  are  not  at  present 
our  game.  He  proceeds  to  set  forth  the  fearful  effects  of  Athe- 
ism:— 

"Then,  blood-stain'd  Murder,  bare  thy  hideous  arm, 

And  thou,  Rebellion,  welter  in  thy  storm: 

Awake,  ye  spirits  of  avenging  crime; 

Burst  from  your  bonds,  and  battle  with  the  time!" 

Mr.  Robert  Montgomery  is  fond  of  personification,  and  belongs, 
we  need  not  say,  to  that  school  of  poets  who  hold  that  nothing 
more  is  necessary  to  a  personification  in  poetry  than  to  begin  a 
word  with  a  capital  letter.  Murder  may,  without  impropriety, 
bare  her  arm,  as  she  did  long  ago,  in  Mr.  Campbell's  Pleasures 
of  Hope.  But  what  possible  motive  Rebellion  can  have  for  welter- 
ing in  her  storm,  what  avenging  crime  may  be,  who  its  spirits 


MR.  ROBERT    MONTGOMERY'S  POEMS  75 

mav  be,  whv  thev  should  be  burst  from  their  bonds,  what  their 
bonds  may  be,  why  they  should  battle  with  the  lime,  what  the 
time  may  be,  and  what  a  battle  between  the  time  and  the  spirits 
of  avenging  crime  would  resemble,  we  must  confess  ourselves 
quite  unable  to  understand. 

"And  here  let  Memory  turn  her  tearful  glance 
On  the  dark  horrors  of  tumultuous  France, 
When  blood  and  blasphemy  defiled  her  land, 
And  fierce  Rebellion  shook  her  savage  hand." 

Whether  Rebellion  shakes  her  own  hand,  shakes  the  hand  of 
Memory,  or  shakes  the  hand  of  France,  or  what  any  one  of  these 
three  metaphors  would  mean^  we  know  no  more  than  we  know 
what  is  the  sense  of  the  following  passage :  — 

"  Let  the  foul  orgies  of  infuriate  crime 
Picture  the  raging  havoc  of  that  time, 
When  leagued  Rebellion  march'd  to  kindle  man, 
Fright  in  her  rear,  and  Murder  in  her  van. 
And  thou,  sweet  flower  of  Austria,  slaughter'd  Queen, 
Who  dropp'd  no  tear  upon  the  dreadful  scene. 
When  gush'd  the  life-blood  from  thine  angel  form, 
And  martyr'd  beauty  perish'd  in  the  storm, 
Once  worshipp'd  paragon  of  all  who  saw. 
Thy  look  obedience,  and  thy  smile  a  law." 

What  is  the  distinction  between  the  foul  orgies  and  the  raging 
havoc  which  the  foul  orgies  are  to  picture  ?  Why  does  Fright  go 
behind  Rebellion,  and  Murder  before?  Why  should  not  Mur- 
der fall  behind  Fright  ?  Or  why  should  not  all  the  three  walk 
abreast  ?     We  have  read  of  a  hero  who  had 

"  Amazement  in  his  van,  with  flight  combined, 
And  Sorrow's  faded  form,  and  Solitude  behind." 

Gray,  we  suspect,  could  have  given  a  reason  for  disposing  the 
allegorical  attendants  of  Edward  thus.  But  to  proceed,  "  Flower 
of  Austria  "  is  stolen  from  Byron.  "  Dropp'd  "  is  false  English. 
"Perish'd  in  the  storm"  means  nothing  at  all;  and  "thy  look 
obedience  "  means  the  very  reverse  of  what  Mr.  Robert  Mont- 
gomery intends  to  say. 

Our  poet  then  proceeds  to  demonstrate  the  immortality  of  the 
soul  r  — 


76  THOMAS  BABINGTON   MACAU  LAY 

"  And  shall  the  soul,  the  fount  of  reason,  die, 
When  dust  and  darkness  round  its  temple  lie? 
Did  God  breathe  in  it  no  ethereal  tire, 
Dimless  and  ciuenchless,  though  the  breath  expire?  " 

The  soul  is  a  fountain;  and  therefore  it  is  not  to  die,  though 
dust  and  darkness  He  round  its  temple,  because  an  ethereal  fire 
has  been  breathed  into  it,  which  cannot  be  quenched  though  its 
breath  expire.  Is  it  the  fountain,  or  the  temple,  that  breathes, 
and  has  fire  breathed  into  it  ? 

Mr.  Montgomery  apostrophizes  the 

"  Immortal  beacons,  —  spirits  of  the  just,"  — 

and  describes  their  employments  in  another  world,  which  are  to 
be,  it  seems,  bathing  in  light,  hearing  fiery  streams  flow,  and 
riding  on  living  cars  of  lightning.  The  death-bed  of  the  sceptic 
is  described  with  what  we  suppose  is  meant  for  energy.  We 
then  have  the  death-bed  of  a  Christian  made  as  ridiculous  as 
false  imagery  and  false  English  can  make  it.  But  this  is  not 
enough.  The  Day  of  Judgment  is  to  be  described,  and  a  roar- 
ing cataract  of  nonsense  is  poured  forth  upon  this  tremendous 
subject.  Earth,  we  are  told,  is  dashed  into  Eternity.  Furnace 
blazes  wheel  round  the  horizon,  and  burst  into  bright  wizard 
phantoms.  Racing  hurricanes  unroll  and  whirl  quivering  fire- 
clouds.  The  white  waves  gallop.  Shadowy  worlds  career 
around.  The  red  and  raging  eye  of  Imagination  is  then  for- 
bidden to  pry  further.  But  further  Mr.  Robert  Montgomery 
persists  in  prying.  The  stars  bound  through  the  airy  roar.  The 
unbosomed  deep  yawns  on  the  ruin.  The  billows  of  Eternity 
then  begin  to  advance.  The  world  glares  in  fiery  slumber.  A 
car  comes  forward  driven  by  living  thunder, 

"  Creation  shudders  with  sublime  dismay, 
And  in  a  blazing  tempest  whirls  away." 

And  this  is  fine  poetry !  This  is  what  ranks  its  writer  with  the 
master-spirits  of  the  age!  This  is  what  has  been  described, 
over  and  over  again,  in  terms  which  would  require  some  qualifica- 
tion if  used  respecting  Paradise  Lost!  It  is  too  much  that  this 
patchwork,  made  by  stitching  together  old  odds  and  ends  of  what, 
when  new,  was  but  tawdry  frippery,  is  to  be  picked  off  the  dung- 
hill on  which  it  ought  to  rot,  and  to  be  held  up  to  admiration  as 
an  inestimable  specimen  of  art.     And  what  must  we  think  of  a 


MR.   ROBERT  MONTGOMERY'S  POEMS  77 

system  by  means  of  which  verses  like  those  which  we  have  quoted, 
verses  fit  only  for  the  poet's  corner  of  the  Morning  Post,  can  pro- 
duce emolument  and  fame?  The  circulation  of  this  writer's 
poetry  has  been  greater  than  that  of  Southey's  Roderick,  and 
beyond  all  comparison  greater  than  that  of  Gary's  Dante  or  of 
the  best  works  of  Coleridge.  Thus  encouraged,  Mr.  Robert 
Montgomery  has  favoured  the  public  with  volume  after  volume. 
We  have  given  so  much  space  to  the  examination  of  his  first  and 
most  popular  performance  that  we  have  none  to  spare  for  his 
Universal  Prayer,  and  his  smaller  poems,  which,  as  the  puffing 
journals  tell  us,  would  alone  constitute  a  sufficient  title  to  literary 
immortality.  We  shall  pass  at  once  to  his  last  publication,  en- 
titled Satan. 

This  poem  was  ushered  into  the  world  with  the  usual  roar  of 
acclamation.  But  the  thing  was  now  past  a  joke.  Pretensions 
so  unfounded,  so  impudent,  and  so  successful,  had  aroused  a 
spirit  of  resistance.  In  several  magazines  and  reviews,  accord- 
ingly, Satan  has  been  handled  somewhat  roughly,  and  the  arts 
of  the  puffers  have  been  exposed  with  good  sense  and  spirit.  We 
shall,  therefore,  be  very  concise. 

Of  the  two  poems  we  rather  prefer  that  on  the  Omnipresence 
of  the  Deity,  for  the  same  reason  which  induced  Sir  Thomas  More 
to  rank  one  bad  book  above  another.  "Marry,  this  is  somewhat. 
This  is  rhyme.  But  the  other  is  neither  rhyme  nor  reason." 
Satan  is  a  long  soliloquy,  which  the  Devil  pronounces  in  five  or 
six  thousand  lines  of  bad  blank  verse,  concerning  geography, 
politics,  newspapers,  fashionable  society,  theatrical  amusements, 
Sir  Walter  Scott's  novels.  Lord  Byron's  poetry,  and  Mr.  Martin's 
pictures.  The  new  designs  for  Milton  have,  as  was  natural, 
particularly  attracted  the  attention  of  a  personage  who  occupies 
so  conspicuous  a  place  in  them.  Mr.  Martin  must  be  pleased 
to  learn  that,  whatever  may  be  thought  of  those  performances  on 
earth,  they  give  full  satisfaction  in  Pandaemonium,  and  that  he 
is  there  thought  to  have  hit  off  the  likenesses  of  the  various  Thrones 
and  Dominations  very  happily. 

The  motto  to  the  poem  of  Satan  is  taken  from  the  Book  of  Job : 
"Whence  comest  thou?  From  going  to  and  fro  in  the  earth,  and 
walking  up  and  down  in  it."  And  certainly  Mr.  Robert  Mont- 
gomery has  not  failed  to  make  his  hero  go  to  and  fro,  and  walk 
up  and  down.  With  the  exception,  however,  of  this  propensity 
to  locomotion,  Satan  has  not  one  Satanic  quality.     Mad  Tom  had 


78  THOMAS  BABINGTON   MACAU  LAV 

told  us  that  "the  prince  of  darkness  is  a  gentleman" ;  but  we  had 
yet  to  learn  that  he  is  a  respectable  and  pious  gentleman,  whose 
principal  fault  is  that  he  is  something  of  a  twaddle  and  far  too 
liberal  of  his  good  advice.  That  happy  change  in  his  character 
which  Origen  anticipated,  and  of  which  Tillotson  did  not  despair, 
seems  to  be  rapidly  taking  place.  Bad  habits  are  not  eradicated 
in  a  moment.  It  is  not  strange,  therefore,  that  so  old  an  offender 
should  now  and  then  relapse  for  a  short  time  into  wrong  disposi- 
tions. But  to  give  him  his  due,  as  the  proverb  recommends,  we 
must  say  that  he  always  returns,  after  two  or  three  lines  of  impiety, 
to  his  preaching  style.  We  would  seriously  advise  Mr.  Mont- 
gomery to  omit  or  alter  about  a  hundred  lines  in  different  parts  of 
this  large  volume,  and  to  republish  it  under  the  name  of  Gabriel. 
The  reflections  of  which  it  consists  would  come  less  absurdly,  as 
far  as  there  is  a  more  and  a  less  in  extreme  absurdity,  from  a  good 
than  from  a  bad  angel. 

We  can  aft'ord  room  only  for  a  single  quotation.  We  give  one 
taken  at  random,  neither  worse  nor  better,  as  far  as  we  can  per- 
ceive, than  any  other  equal  number  of  lines  in  the  book.  The 
Devil  goes  to  the  play,  and  moralizes  thereon  as  follows :  — 

"Music  and  Pomp  their  mingling  spirit  shed 
Around  me :   beauties  in  their  cloud-like  robes 
Shine  forth,  —  a  scenic  paradise,  it  glares 
Intoxication  through  the  reeling  sense 
Of  fiush'd  enjoyment.     In  the  motley  host 
Three  prime  gradations  may  be  rank'd:   the  first, 
To  mount  upon  the  wings  of  Shakespeare's  mind, 
And  win  a  flash  of  his  Promethean  thought,  — 
To  smile  and  weep,  to  shudder,  and  achieve 
A  round  of  passionate  omnipotence, 
Attend:   the  second,  are  a  sensual  tribe. 
Convened  to  hear  romantic  harlots  sing, 
On  forms  to  banquet  a  lascivious  gaze, 
While  the  bright  perfidy  of  wanton  eyes 
Through  brain  and  spirit  darts  delicious  fire: 
The  last,  a  throng  most  pitiful !   who  seem, 
With  their  corroded  figures,  rayless  glance, 
And  death-like  struggle  of  decaying  age, 
Like  painted  skeletons  in  charncl  pomp 
Set  forth  to  satirize  the  human  kind !  — 
'  How  fine  a  prospect  for  demoniac  view ! 

'Creatures  whose  souls  outbalance  worlds  awake!* 
Methinks  I  hear  a  pitying  angel  cry." 

Here  we  conclude.  If  our  remarks  give  pain  to  Mr.  Robert 
Montgomery,  we  are  sorry  for  it.     But,  at  whatever  cost  of  pain 


MR.  ROBERT  MONTGOMERY'S  POEMS  79 

to  individuals,  literature  must  be  purified  from  this  taint.  And, 
to  show  that  we  are  not  actuated  by  any  feeling  of  personal  enmity 
towards  him,  we  hereby  give  notice  that,  as  soon  as  any  book  shall, 
by  means  of  puffing,  reach  a  second  edition,  our  intention  is  to 
do  unto  the  writer  of  it  as  we  have  done  unto  Mr.  Robert  Mont- 
gomery. 


V 

WALTER  BAGEHOT 

(1826-1877) 


CHARLES    DICKENS* 
[First  published  in  1858.     From  Literary  Studies,  Volume  2] 

It  must  give  Mr.  Dickens  much  pleasure  to  look  at  the  collected 
series  of  his  writings.  He  has  told  us  of  the  beginnings  of  Pick- 
wick. 

"I  was,"  he  relates  in  what  is  now  the  preface  to  that  work,  "a  young  man 
of  three  and  twenty,  when  the  present  publishers,  attracted  by  some  pieces 
I  was  at  that  time  writing  in  the  Morning  Chronicle  newspaper  (of  which 
one  series  had  lately  been  collected  and  published  in  two  volumes,  illustrated 
by  my  esteemed  friend  Mr.  George  Cruikshank),  waited  upon  me  to  propose 
a  something  that  should  be  published  in  shilling  numbers  —  then  only  known 
to  me,  or  I  believe  to  anybody  else,  by  a  dim  recollection  of  certain  intermi- 
nable novels  in  that  form,  which  used,  some  five  and  twenty  years  ago,  to  be 
carried  about  the  country  by  pedlars,  and  over  some  of  which  I  remember  to 
have  shed  innumerable  tears,  before  I  served  my  apprenticeship  to  Life. 
When  I  opened  my  door  in  Furnival's  Inn  to  the  managing  partner  who  rep- 
resented the  firm,  I  recognized  in  him  the  person  from  whose  hands  I  had 
bought,  two  or  three  years  previously,  and  whom  I  had  never  seen  before  or 
since,  my  first  copy  of  the  magazine  in  which  my  first  effusion  —  dropped 
stealthily  one  evening  at  twilight,  with  fear  and  trembling,  into  a  dark  letter- 
box, in  a  dark  oilfice,  up  a  dark  court  in  Fleet  Street  —  appeared  in  all  the 
glory  of  print;  on  which  occasion,  by-thc-bye,  —  how  well  I  recollect  it!  — 
I  walked  down  to  Westminster  Hall,  and  turned  into  it  for  half  an  hour,  be- 
cause my  eyes  were  so  dimmed  with  joy  and  pride,  that  they  could  not  bear 
the  street,  and  were  not  fit  to  be  seen  there.  I  told  my  visitor  of  the  coinci- 
dence, which  we  both  hailed  as  a  good  omen;  and  so  fell  to  business." 

■  Cheap  Edition  of  the  Works  of  Charles  Dickens.  The  Pickwick  Papers, 
Nicholas  Nickleby,  etc.     London,  1857-8.     Chapman  and  Hall. 

80 


CHARLES  DICKENS  Si 

After  such  a  beginning,  there  must  be  great  enjoyment  in  look- 
ing at  the  long  series  of  closely  printed  green  volumes,  in  remem- 
bering their  marvellous  popularity,  in  knowing  that  they  are  a 
familiar  literature  wherever  the  English  language  is  spoken,  — 
that  they  are  read  with  admiring  appreciation  by  persons  of  the 
highest  culture  at  the  centre  of  civilization,  —  that  they  amuse, 
and  are  fit  to  amuse,  the  roughest  settler  in  Vancouver's  Island. 

The  penetrating  power  of  this  remarkable  genius  among  all 
classes  at  home  is  not  inferior  to  its  diffusive  energy  abroad.  The 
phrase  "household  book"  has,  when  applied  to  the  works  of 
Mr.  Dickens,  a  pecuhar  propriety.  There  is  no  contemporary 
English  writer,  whose  works  are  read  so  generally  through  the 
whole  house,  who  can  give  pleasure  to  the  servants  as  well  as  to 
the  mistress,  to  the  children  as  well  as  to  the  master.  Mr.  Thack- 
eray without  doubt  exercises  a  more  potent  and  plastic  fascination 
within  his  sphere,  but  that  sphere  is  limited.  It  is  restricted  to 
that  part  of  the  middle  class  which  gazes  inquisitively  at  the 
"Vanity  Fair"  world.  The  delicate  touches  of  our  great  satirist 
have,  for  such  readers,  not  only  the  charm  of  wit,  but  likewise 
the  interest  of  valuable  information;  he  tells  them  of  the  topics 
which  they  want  to  know.  But  below  this  class  there  is  another 
and  far  larger,  which  is  incapable  of  comprehending  the  idling 
world,  or  of  appreciating  the  accuracy  of  delineations  drawn  from 
it,  —  which  would  not  know  the  difference  between  a  picture  of 
Grosvenor  Square  by  Mr.  Thackeray  and  the  picture  of  it  in  a 
Minerva-Press  novel,  —  which  only  cares  for  or  knows  of  its 
own  multifarious,  industrial,  fig-selling  world,  —  and  over  these 
also  Mr.  Dickens  has  power. 

It  cannot  be  amiss  to  take  this  opportunity  of  investigating, 
even  slightly,  the  causes  of  so  great  a  popularity.  And  if,  in  the 
course  of  our  article,  we  may  seem  to  be  ready  with  over-refining 
criticism,  or  to  be  unduly  captious  with  theoretical  objections, 
we  hope  not  to  forget  that  so  great  and  so  diffused  an  influence 
is  a  datum  for  literary  investigation,  —  that  books  which  have 
been  thus  tried  upon  mankind  and  have  thus  succeeded,  must  be 
books  of  immense  genius,  —  and  that  it  is  our  duty  as  critics  to 
explain,  as  far  as  we  can,  the  nature  and  the  limits  of  that  genius, 
but  never  for  one  moment  to  deny  or  question  its  existence. 

Men  of  genius  may  be  divided  into  regular  and  irregular.  Cer- 
tain minds,  the  moment  we  think  of  them,  suggest  to  us  the  ideas 
of  symmetry  and  proportion.     Plato's  name,  for  example,  calls 


82  WALTER  BAGEHOT 

up  at  once  the  impression  of  something  ordered,  measured,  and 
settled :  it  is  the  exact  contrary  of  everything  eccentric,  immature, 
or  undeveloped.  The  opinions  of  such  a  mind  are  often  erroneous, 
and  some  of  them  may,  from  change  of  time,  of  intellectual  data, 
or  from  chance,  seem  not  to  be  quite  worthy  of  it;  but  the  mode 
in  which  those  opinions  are  expressed,  and  (as  far  as  we  can  make 
it  out)  the  mode  in  which  they  are  framed,  affect  us,  as  we  have 
said,  with  a  sensation  of  symmetricalness.  It  is  not  very  easy  to 
define  exactly  to  what  peculiar  internal  characteristic  this  external 
effect  is  due:  the  feeling  is  distinct,  but  the  cause  is  obscure;  it 
lies  hid  in  the  peculiar  constitution  of  great  minds,  and  we  should 
not  wonder  that  it  is  not  very  easy  either  to  conceive  or  to  describe. 
On  the  whole,  however,  the  effect  seems  to  be  produced  by  a 
peculiar  proportionateness,  in  each  instance,  of  the  mind  to  the 
tasks  which  it  undertakes,  amid  which  we  see  it,  and  by  which 
we  measure  it.  Thus  we  feel  that  the  powers  and  tendencies  of 
Plato's  mind  and  nature  were  more  fit  than  those  of  any  other 
philosopher  for  the  due  consideration  and  exposition  of  the  highest 
problems  of  philosophy,  of  the  doubts  and  difficulties  which  con- 
cern man  as  man.  His  genius  was  adapted  to  its  element;  and 
change  would  mar  the  delicacy  of  the  thought,  or  the  polished 
accuracy  of  the  expression.  The  weapon  was  fitted  to  its  aim. 
Every  instance  of  proportionateness  does  not,  however,  lead  us 
to  attribute  this  peculiar  symmetry  to  the  whole  mind  w'e  are 
observing.  The  powers  must  not  only  be  suited  to  the  task  under- 
taken, but  the  task  itself  must  also  be  suited  to  a  human  being, 
and  employ  all  the  marvellous  faculties  with  which  he  is  endowed. 
The  neat  perfection  of  such  a  mind  as  Talleyrand's  is  the  antith- 
esis to  the  symmetry  of  genius ;  the  niceties  neither  of  diplomacy 
nor  of  conversation  give  scope  to  the  entire  powers  of  a  great 
nature.  We  may  lay  down  as  the  condition  of  a  regular  or  sym- 
metrical genius,  that  it  should  have  the  exact  combination  of 
powers  suited  to  graceful  and  easy  success  in  an  exercise  of  mind 
great  enough  to  task  the  whole  intellectual  nature. 

On  the  other  hand,  men  of  irregular  or  unsymmetrical  genius 
are  eminent  either  for  some  one  or  some  few  peculiarities  of  mind, 
have  possibly  special  defects  on  other  sides  of  their  intellectual 
nature,  at  any  rate  want  what  the  scientific  men  of  the  present 
day  would  call  the  definite  proportion  of  faculties  and  qualities 
suited  to  the  exact  work  they  have  in  hand.  The  foundation  of 
many  criticisms  of  Shakespeare  is,  that  he  is  deficient  in  this 


CHARLES  DICKENS  83 

peculiar  proportion.  His  overteeming  imagination  gives  at  times, 
and  not  unfrequently,  a  great  feeling  of  irregularity;  there  seems 
to  be  confusion.  We  have  the  tall  trees  of  the  forest,  the  majestic 
creations  of  the  highest  genius;  but  we  have,  besides,  a  bushy 
second  growth,  an  obtrusion  of  secondary  images  and  fancies, 
which  prevent  our  taking  an  exact  measure  of  such  grandeur.  We 
have  not  the  sensation  of  intense  simplicity,  which  must  probably 
accompany  the  highest  conceivable  greatness.  Such  is  also  the 
basis  of  Mr.  Hallam's  criticism  on  Shakespeare's  language,' 
which  Mr.  Arnold  has  lately  revived.^  "His  expression  is  often 
faulty,"  because  his  illustrative  imagination,  somewhat  predomi- 
nating over  his  other  faculties,  diffuses  about  the  main  expression 
a  supplement  of  minor  metaphors  which  sometimes  distract  the 
comprehension,  and  almost  always  deprive  his  style  of  the  charm 
that  arises  from  undeviating  directness.  Doubtless  this  is  an 
instance  of  the  very  highest  kind  of  irregular  genius,  in  which 
all  the  powers  exist  in  the  mind  in  a  very  high,  and  almost  all  of 
them  in  the  very  highest  measure,  but  in  which  from  a  slight 
excess  in  a  single  one,  the  charm  of  proportion  is  lessened.  The 
most  ordinary  cases  of  irregular  genius  are  those  in  which  single 
faculties  are  abnormally  developed,  and  call  off  the  attention  from 
all  the  rest  of  the  mind  by  their  prominence  and  activity.  Litera- 
ture, as  the  "fragment  of  fragments,"  is  so  full  of  the  fragments 
of  such  minds  that  it  is  needless  to  specify  instances. 

Possibly  it  may  be  laid  down  that  one  of  two  elements  is  essen- 
tial to  a  symmetrical  mind.  It  is  evident  that  such  a  mind  must 
either  apply  itself  to  that  which  is  theoretical  or  that  which  is 
practical,  to  the  world  of  abstraction  or  to  the  world  of  objects 
and  realities.  In  the  former  case  the  deductive  understanding, 
which  masters  first  principles,  and  makes  deductions  from  them, 
the  thin  ether  of  the  intellect,  —  the  "mind  itself  by  itself,"  — 
must  evidently  assume  a  great  prominence.  To  attempt  to  com- 
prehend principles  without  it,  is  to  try  to  swim  without  arms,  or 
to  fly  without  wings.  Accordingly,  in  the  mind  of  Plato,  and  in 
others  like  him,  the  abstract  and  deducing  understanding  fills 
a  great  place;  the  imagination  seems  a  kind  of  eye  to  descry  its 
data;  the  artistic  instinct  an  arranging  impulse,  which  sets  in 
order  its  inferences  and  conclusions.  On  the  other  hand,  if  a 
symmetrical  mind  busy  itself  with  the  active  side  of  human  life, 

1  Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  Europe,  Vol.  II,  Chapter  VT. 

2  Preface  to  Matthew  Arnold's  Poems. 


84  WALTER  BACEHOT 

with  the  world  of  concrete  men  and  real  things,  its  principal  quality 
will  be  a  practical  sagacity,  which  forms  with  ease  a  distinct  view 
and  just  appreciation  of  all  the  mingled  objects  that  the  world 
presents,  —  which  allots  to  each  its  own  place,  and  its  intrinsic 
and  appropriate  rank.  Possibly  no  mind  gives  such  an  idea  of 
this  sort  of  symmetry  as  Chaucer's.  Everything  in  it  seems  in  its 
place.  A  healthy  sagacious  man  of  the  world  has  gone  through 
the  world;  he  loves  it,  and  knows  it;  he  dwells  on  it  with  fond 
appreciation;  every  object  of  the  old  life  of  "merry  England" 
seems  to  fall  into  its  precise  niche  in  his  ordered  and  symmetrical 
comprehension.  The  prologue  to  the  Canterbury  Tales  is  in 
itself  a  series  of  memorial  tablets  to  mediaeval  society;  each  class 
has  its  tomb,  and  each  its  apt  inscription.  A  man  without  such  an 
apprehensive  and  broad  sagacity  must  fail  in  every  extensive 
delineation  of  various  life;  he  might  attempt  to  describe  what  he 
did  not  penetrate,  or  if  by  a  rare  discretion  he  avoided  that  mis- 
take, his  works  would  want  the  binding  element;  he  would  be 
deficient  in  that  distinct  sense  of  relation  and  combination  which 
is  necessary  for  the  depiction  of  the  whole  of  life,  which  gives  to  it 
unity  at  first,  and  imparts  to  it  a  mass  in  the  memory  ever  after- 
wards. And  eminence  in  one  or  other  of  these  marking  facul- 
ties —  either  in  the  deductive  abstract  intellect,  or  the  practical 
seeing  sagacity  —  seems  essential  to  the  mental  constitution  of  a 
symmetrical  genius,  at  least  in  man.  There  are,  after  all,  but 
two  principal  all-important  spheres  in  human  life  —  thought 
and  action;  and  we  can  hardly  conceive  of  a  masculine  mind 
symmetrically  developed,  which  did  not  evince  its  symmetry  by 
an  evident  perfection  in  one  or  other  of  those  pursuits,  which  did 
not  leave  the  trace  of  its  distinct  reflection  upon  the  one,  or  of 
its  large  insight  upon  the  other  of  them.  Possibly  it  may  be 
thought  that  in  the  sphere  of  pure  art  there  may  be  room  for  a 
symmetrical  development  different  from  these;  but  it  will  perhaps 
be  found,  on  examination  of  such  cases,  either  that  under  peculiar 
and  appropriate  disguises  one  of  these  great  qualities  is  present, 
or  that  the  apparent  symmetry  is  the  narrow  perfection  of  a 
limited  nature,  which  may  be  most  excellent  in  itself,  as  in  the 
stricter  form  of  sacred  art,  but  which,  as  we  explained,  is  quite 
opposed  to  that  broad  perfection  of  the  thinking  being,  to  which 
we  have  applied  the  name  of  the  symmetry  of  genius. 

If  this  classification  of  men  of  genius  be  admitted,  there  can  be  no 
hesitation  in  assigning  to  Mr.  Dickens  his  place  in  it.     His  genius 


CHARLES  DICKENS  85 

is  essentially  irregular  and  unsymmetrical.  Hardly  any  English 
writer  perhaps  is  much  more  so.  His  style  is  an  example  of  it. 
It  is  descriptive,  racy,  and  flowing;  it  is  instinct  with  new  imagery 
and  singular  illustration;  but  it  does  not  indicate  that  due  pro- 
portion of  the  faculties  to  one  another  which  is  a  beauty  in  itself, 
and  which  cannot  help  diffusing  beauty  over  every  happy  word 
and  moulded  clause.  We  may  choose  an  illustration  at  random. 
The  following  graphic  description  will  do :  — 

"  If  Lord  George  Gordon  had  appeared  in  the  eyes  of  Mr.  Willet,  over- 
night, a  nobleman  of  somewhat  quaint  and  odd  exterior,  the  impression  was 
confirmed  this  morning,  and  increased  a  hundred-fold.  Sitting  bolt  upright 
upon  his  bony  steed,  with  his  long,  straight  hair  dangling  about  his  face  and 
fluttering  in  the  wind ;  his  limbs  all  angular  and  rigid,  his  elbows  stuck  out 
on  either  side  ungracefullv,  and  his  whole  frame  jogged  and  shaken  at 
every  motion  of  his  horse's  feet;  a  more  grotesque  or  more  ungainly  figure 
can  hardly  be  conceived.  In  lieu  of  whip,  he  carried  in  his  hand  a  great  gold- 
headed  cane,  as  large  as  any  footman  carries  in  these  days;  and  his  various 
modes  of  holding  this  unwieldy  weapon  —  now  upright  before  his  face  like 
the  sabre  of  a  horse-soldier,  now  over  his  shoulder  like  a  musket,  now  between 
his  finger  and  thumb,  but  always  in  some  uncouth  and  awkward  fashion  — 
contributed  in  no  small  degree  to  the  absurdity  of  his  appearance.  Stiff, 
lank,  and  solemn,  dressed  in  an  unusual  manner,  and  ostentatiously  exhibit- 
ing —  whether  by  design  or  accident  —  all  his  peculiarities  of  carriage, 
gesture,  and  conduct,  all  the  qualities,  natural  and  artificial,  in  which  he 
differed  from  other  men,  he  might  have  moved  the  sternest  looker-on  to  laugh- 
ter, and  fully  provoked  the  smiles  and  whispered  jests  which  greeted  his  de- 
parture from  the  Maypole  Inn. 

"Quite  unconscious,  however,  of  the  effect  he  produced,  he  trotted  on  be- 
side his  secretary,  talking  to  himself  nearly  all  the  way,  until  they  came  within 
a  mile  or  two  of  London,  when  now  and  then  some  passenger  went  by  who 
knew  him  by  sight,  and  pointed  him  out  to  some  one  else,  and  perhaps  stood 
looking  after  him,  or  cried  in  jest  or  earnest  as  it  might  be,  '  Hurrah,  Geordie ! 
No  Popery ! '  At  which  he  would  gravely  pull  off  his  hat  and  bow.  When 
they  reached  the  town  and  rode  along  the  streets,  these  notices  became  more 
frequent;  some  laughed,  some  hissed,  some  turned  their  heads  and  smiled, 
some  wondered  who  he  was,  some  ran  along  the  pavement  by  his  side  and 
cheered.  When  this  happened  in  a  crush  of  carts  and  chairs  and  coaches,  he 
would  make  a  dead  stop,  and  pulling  off  his  hat,  cry,  '  Gentlemen,  No  Pop- 
ery ! '  to  which  the  gentlemen  would  respond  with  lusty  voices,  and  with 
three  times  three;  and  then  on  he  would  go  again  with  a  score  or  so  of  the 
raggedest  following  at  his  horse's  heels,  and  shouting  till  their  throats  were 
parched. 

"The  old  ladies  too  —  there  were  a  great  many  old  ladies  in  the  streets, 
and  these  all  knew  him.  Some  of  them  —  not  those  of  the  highest  rank, 
but  such  as  sold  fruit  from  baskets  and  carried  burdens  —  clapped  their 
shrivelled  hands,  and  raised  a  weazen,  piping,  shrill  'Hurrah,  my  lord.' 
Others  waved  their  hands  or  handkerchiefs,  or  shook  their  fans  or  parasols, 
or  threw  up  windows,  and  called  in  haste  to  those  within  to  come  and  see. 


86  WALTER  BAGEHOT 

All  these  marks  of  popular  esteem  he  received  with  profound  gravity  and 
respect ;  bowing  very  low,  and  so  frequently  that  his  hat  was  more  off  his  head 
than  on;  and  looking  up  at  the  houses  as  he  passed  along,  with  the  air  of  one 
who  was  making  a  public  entry,  and  yet  was  not  puffcd-up  or  proud."  ' 

No  one  would  think  of  citing  such  a  passage  as  this,  as  exempli- 
fying the  proportioned  beauty  of  finished  writing;  it  is  not  the 
writing  of  an  evenly  developed  or  of  a  highly  cultured  mind;  it 
abounds  in  jolts  and  odd  turns;  it  is  full  of  singular  twists  and 
needless  complexities:  but,  on  the  other  hand,  no  one  can  deny 
its  great  and  peculiar  merit.  It  is  an  odd  style,  and  it  is  very  odd 
how  much  you  read  it.  It  is  the  overflow  of  a  copious  mind, 
though  not  the  chastened  expression  of  a  harmonious  one. 

The  same  quality  characterizes  the  matter  of  his  works.  His 
range  is  very  varied.  He  has  attempted  to  describe  every  kind 
of  scene  in  English  life,  from  quite  the  lowest  to  almost  the  highest. 
He  has  not  endeavoured  to  secure  success  by  confining  himself 
to  a  single  path,  nor  wearied  the  public  with  repetitions  of  the 
subjects  by  the  delineation  of  which  he  originally  obtained  fame. 
In  his  earlier  works  he  never  writes  long  without  saying  something 
well;  something  which  no  other  man  would  have  said;  but  even 
in  them  it  is  the  characteristic  of  his  power  that  it  is  apt  to  fail 
him  at  once;  from  masterly  strength  we  pass  without  interval  to 
almost  infantine  weakness, — something  like  disgust  succeeds  in 
a  moment  to  an  extreme  admiration.  Such  is  the  natural  fate  of 
an  unequal  mind  employing  itself  on  a  vast  and  variegated  sub- 
ject. In  writing  on  the  Waverley  Novels,  we  ventured  to  make 
a  division  of  novels  into  the  ubiquitous  —  it  would  have  been 
perhaps  better  to  say  the  miscellaneous  —  and  the  sentimental: 
the  first,  as  its  name  implies,  busying  itself  with  the  whole  of 
human  life,  the  second  restricting  itself  within  a  peculiar  and 
limited  theme.  Mr.  Dickens's  novels  are  all  of  the  former  class. 
They  aim  to  delineate  nearly  all  that  part  of  our  national  life 
which  can  be  delineated,  —  at  least,  within  the  limits  which  social 
morality  prescribes  to  social  art ;  but  you  cannot  read  his  deline- 
ation of  any  part  without  being  struck  with  its  singular  inccm- 
plcteness.  An  artist  once  said  of  the  best  work  of  another  artist: 
"  Yes,  it  is  a  pretty  patch."  If  we  might  venture  on  the  phrase, 
we  should  say  that  Mr.  Dickens's  pictures  are  graphic  scraps; 
his  best  books  are  compilations  of  them. 

The  truth  is,  that  Mr.  Dickens  wholly  wants  the  two  elements 

'  Barnaby  Rudge,  Chapter  XXXVII. 


CHARLES  DICKENS  Sj 

which  we  have  spoken  of,  as  one  or  other  requisite  for  a  symmet- 
rical genius.  He  is  utterly  deficient  in  the  faculty  of  reasoning. 
"Mamma,  what  shall  I  think  about?"  said  the  small  girl.  "My 
dear,  don't  think,"  was  the  old-fashioned  reply.  We  do  not 
allege  that  in  the  strict  theory  of  education  this  was  a  correct  reply; 
modern  writers  think  otherwise;  but  we  wish  some  one  would 
say  it  to  Mr.  Dickens.  He  is  often  troubled  with  the  idea  that  he 
must  reflect,  and  his  reflections  are  perhaps  the  worst  reading 
in  the  world.  There  is  a  sentimental  confusion  about  them;  we 
never  find  the  consecutive  precision  of  mature  theory,  or  the  cold 
distinctness  of  clear  thought.  Vivid  facts  stand  out  in  his  imagi- 
nation; and  a  fresh  illustrative  style  brings  them  home  to  the 
imagination  of  his  readers ;  but  his  continuous  philosophy  utterly 
fails  in  the  attempt  to  harmonize  them,  —  to  educe  a  theory  or 
elaborate  a  precept  from  them.  Of  his  social  thinking  we  shall 
have  a  few  words  to  say  in  detail;  his  didactic  humour  is  very 
unfortunate :  no  writer  is  less  fitted  for  an  excursion  to  the  impera- 
tive mood.  At  present,  we  only  say,  what  is  so  obvious  as  scarcely 
to  need  saying,  that  his  abstract  understanding  is  so  far  inferior 
to  his  picturesque  imagination  as  to  give  even  to  his  best  works 
the  sense  of  jar  and  incompleteness,  and  to  deprive  them  alto- 
gether of  the  crystalline  finish  which  is  characteristic  of  the  clear 
and  cultured  understanding. 

Nor  has  Mr.  Dickens  the  easy  and  various  sagacity  which,  as 
has  been  said,  gives  a  unity  to  all  which  it  touches.  He  has, 
indeed,  a  quality  which  is  near  allied  to  it  in  appearance.  His 
shrewdness  in  some  things,  especially  in  traits  and  small  things, 
is  wonderful.  His  works  are  full  of  acute  remarks  on  petty  doings, 
and  weU  exemplify  the  telling  power  of  minute  circumstantiality. 
But  the  minor  species  of  perceptive  sharpness  is  so  different  from 
diiJused  sagacity,  that  the  two  scarcely  ever  are  to  be  found  in 
the  same  mind.  There  is  nothing  less  like  the  great  lawyer, 
acquainted  with  broad  principles  and  applying  them  with  dis- 
tinct deduction,  than  the  attorney's  clerk  who  catches  at  small 
points  like  a  dog  biting  at  flies.  " Over-sharpness"  in  the  student 
is  the  most  unpromising  symptom  of  the  logical  jurist.  You  must 
not  ask  a  horse  in  blinkers  for  a  large  view  of  a  landscape.  In  the 
same  way,  a  detective  ingenuity  in  microscopic  detail  is  of  all 
mental  qualities  most  unlike  the  broad  sagacity  by  which  the 
great  painters  of  human  affairs  have  unintentionally  stamped 
the  mark  of  unity  on  their  productions.     They  show  by  their 


88  WALTER  BAGEHOT 

treatment  of  each  case  that  they  understand  the  whole  of  life; 
the  special  delineator  of  fragments  and  points  shows  that  he 
understands  them  only.  In  one  respect  the  defect  is  more  striking 
in  Mr.  Dickens  than  in  any  other  novelist  of  the  present  day.  The 
most  remarkable  deficiency  in  modern  tiction  is  its  omission  of 
the  business  of  life,  of  all  those  countless  occupations,  pursuits, 
and  callings  in  which  most  men  live  and  move,  and  by  which  they 
have  their  being.  In  most  novels  money  grows.  You  have  no 
idea  of  the  toil,  the  patience,  and  the  wearing  anxiety  by  which 
men  of  action  provide  for  the  day,  and  lay  up  for  the  future,  and 
support  those  that  are  given  into  their  care.  Mr.  Dickens  is  not 
chargeable  with  this  omission.  He  perpetually  deals  with  the 
pecuniary  part  of  life.  Almost  all  his  characters  have  deter- 
mined occupations,  of  which  he  is  apt  to  talk  even  at  too  much 
length.  When  he  rises  from  the  toiling  to  the  luxurious  classes, 
his  genius  in  most  cases  deserts  him.  The  delicate  refinement 
and  discriminating  taste  of  the  idling  orders  are  not  in  his  way; 
he  knows  the  dry  arches  of  London  Bridge  better  than  Belgravia. 
He  excels  in  inventories  of  poor  furniture,  and  is  learned  in  pawn- 
brokers' tickets.  But,  although  his  creative  power  lives  and 
works  among  the  middle  class  and  industrial  section  of  English 
society,  he  has  never  painted  the  highest  part  of  their  daily  intel- 
lectual life.  He  made,  indeed,  an  attempt  to  paint  specimens  of 
the  apt  and  able  man  of  business  in  Nicholas  Nickleby;  but  the 
Messrs.  Cheeryble  are  among  the  stupidest  of  his  characters. 
He  forgot  that  breadth  of  platitude  is  rather  dilTerent  from  breadth 
of  sagacity.  His  delineations  of  middle-class  Hfe  have  in  conse- 
quence a  harshness  and  meanness  which  do  not  belong  to  that 
life  in  reality.  He  omits  the  relieving  element.  He  describes 
the  figs  which  are  sold,  but  not  the  talent  which  sells  figs  well. 
And  it  is  the  same  want  of  diffused  sagacity  in  his  own  nature 
which  has  made  his  pictures  of  life  so  odd  and  disjointed,  and 
which  has  deprived  them  of  symmetry  and  unity. 

The  bizarrerie  of  Mr.  Dickens's  genius  is  rendered  more  re- 
markable by  the  inordinate  measure  of  his  special  excellences. 
The  first  of  these  is  his  power  of  observation  in  detail.  W'c  have 
heard,  —  we  do  not  know  whether  correctly  or  incorrectly,  — 
that  he  can  go  down  a  crowded  street,  and  tell  you  all  that  is  in 
it,  what  each  shop  was,  what  the  grocer's  name  was,  how  many 
scraps  of  orange-peel  there  were  on  the  pavement.  His  works 
give  you  exactly  the  same  idea.     The  amount  of  detail  which 


CHARLES  DICKENS  89 

there  is  in  them  is  something  amazing,  —  to  an  ordinary  writer 
something  incredible.  There  are  single  pages  containing  telling 
miniiticF,  which  other  people  would  have  thought  enough  for  a 
volume.  Nor  is  his  sensibility  to  external  objects,  though  omnivo- 
rous, insensible  to  the  artistic  effect  of  each.  There  are  scarcely 
anywhere  such  pictures  of  London  as  he  draws.  No  writer  has 
equally  comprehended  the  artistic  material  which  is  given  by 
its  extent,  its  aggregation  of  different  elements,  its  mouldiness, 
its  brilliancy. 

Nor  does  his  genius  —  though,  from  some  idiosyncrasy  of 
mind  or  accident  of  external  situation,  it  is  more  especially 
directed  to  city  life  —  at  all  stop  at  the  city  wall.  He  is  especially 
at  home  in  the  picturesque  and  obvious  parts  of  country  life, 
particularly  in  the  comfortable  and  (so  to  say)  mouldering  portion 
of  it.  The  following  is  an  instance;  if  not  the  best  that  could 
be  cited,  still  one  of  the  best :  — 

"They  arranged  to  proceed  upon  their  journey  next  evening,  as  a  stage- 
waggon,  which  travelled  for  some  distance  on  the  same  road  as  they  must  take, 
would  stop  at  the  inn  to  change  horses,  and  the  driver  for  a  small  gratuity 
would  give  Nell  a  place  inside.  A  bargain  was  soon  struck  when  the  waggon 
came;  and  in  due  time  it  rolled  away;  with  the  child  comfortably  bestowed 
among  the  softer  packages,  her  grandfather  and  the  schoolmaster  walking 
on  beside  the  driver,  and  the  landlady  and  all  the  good  folks  of  the  inn 
screaming  out  their  good  wishes  and  farewells. 

"What  a  soothing,  luxurious,  drowsy  way  of  travelling,  to  lie  inside  that 
slowly-moving  mountain,  listening  to  the  tinkling  of  the  horses'  bells,  the 
occasional  smacking  of  the  carter's  whip,  the  smooth  rolling  of  the  great  broad 
wheels,  the  rattle  of  the  harness,  the  cheery  good-nights  of  passing  travellers 
jogging  past  on  little  short-stepped  horses  —  all  made  pleasantly  indistinct 
by  the  thick  awning,  which  seemed  made  for  lazy  listening  under,  till  one  fell 
asleep !  The  very  going  to  sleep,  still  with  an  indistinct  idea,  as  the  head 
jogged  to  and  fro  upon  the  pillow,  of  moving  onward  with  no  trouble  or  fatigue, 
and  hearing  all  these  sounds  like  dreamy  music,  lulling  to  the  senses  —  and 
the  slow  waking  up,  and  finding  one's  self  staring  out  through  the  breezy 
curtain  half-opened  in  the  front,  far  up  into  the  cold  bright  sky  with  its 
countless  stars,  and  downwards  at  the  driver's  lantern  dancing  on  like  its 
namesake  Jack  of  the  swamps  and  marshes,  and  sideways  at  the  dark  grim 
trees,  and  forward  at  the  long  bare  road  rising  up,  up,  up,  until  it  stopped 
abruptly  at  a  sharp  high  ridge  as  if  there  were  no  more  road,  and  all  beyond 
was  sky  —  and  the  stopping  at  the  inn  to  bait,  and  being  helped  out,  and  going 
into  a  room  with  fire  and  candles,  and  winking  very  much,  and  being  agree- 
ably reminded  that  the  night  was  cold,  and  anxious  for  very  comfort's  sake 
to  think  it  colder  than  it  was !  What  a  delicious  journey  was  that  journey 
in  the  waggon ! 

"Then  the  going  on  again  —  so  fresh  at  first,  and  shortly  afterwards  so 
sleepy.     The  waking  from  a  sound  nap  as  the  mail  came  dashing  past  like  a 


90 


WALTER   BAGEHOT 


highway  comet,  with  gleaming  lamps  and  rattling  hoofs,  and  visions  of  a 
guard  behind,  standing  up  to  keep  his  feet  warm,  and  of  a  gentleman  in  a 
fur  cap  opening  his  eyes  and  looking  wild  and  stupefied  —  the  stopping  at 
the  turnpike,  where  the  man  has  gone  to  bed,  and  knocking  at  the  door 
until  he  answered  with  a  smothered  shout  from  under  the  bed-clothes  in  the 
little  room  above,  where  the  faint  light  was  burning,  and  presently  came  down, 
night-capped  and  shivering,  to  throw  the  gate  wide  open,  and  wish  all  wag- 
gons off  the  road  except  by  day.  The  cold  sharp  interval  between  night  and 
morning  —  the  distant  streak  of  light  widening  and  spreading,  and  turning 
from  grey  to  white,  and  from  white  to  yellow,  and  from  yellow  to  burning  red 
• —  the  presence  of  day,  with  all  its  cheerfulness  and  life  —  men  and  horses  at 
the  plough  —  birds  in  the  trees  and  hedges,  and  boys  in  solitary  fields  frighten- 
ing them  away  with  rattles.  The  coming  to  a  town  —  people  busy  in  the 
market;  light  carts  and  chaises  round  the  tavern  yard;  tradesmen  standing 
at  their  doors;  men  running  horses  up  and  down  the  street  for  sale;  pigs 
plunging  and  grunting  in  the  dirty  distance,  getting  off  with  long  strings  at 
their  legs,  running  into  clean  chemists'  shops  and  being  dislodged  with  brooms 
by  'prentices;  the  night-coach  changing  horses  —  the  passengers  cheerless, 
cold,  ugly,  and  discontented,  with  three  months'  growth  of  hair  in  one  night 

—  the  coachman  fresh  as  from  a  bandbo.x,  and  exquisitely  beautiful  by  con- 
trast :  —  so  much  bustle,  so  many  things  in  motion,  such  a  variety  of  incidents 

—  when  was  there  a  journey  with  so  many  delights  as  that  journey  in  the 
waggon  1"  ' 

Or,  as  a  relief  from  a  very  painful  series  of  accompanying 
characters,  it  is  pleasant  to  read  and  remember  the  description 
of  the  fine  morning  on  which  Mr.  Jonas  Chuzzlewitdoes  not  reflect. 
Mr.  Dickens  has,  however,  no  feeling  analogous  to  the  nature- 
worship  of  some  other  recent  writers.  There  is  nothing  Words- 
worthian  in  his  bent;  the  interpreting  inspiration  (as  that  school 
speak)  is  not  his.  Nor  has  he  the  erudition  in  difficult  names 
which  has  filled  some  pages  in  late  novelists  with  mineralogy 
and  botany.  His  descriptions  of  Nature  are  fresh  and  superficial; 
they  are  not  sermonic  or  scientific. 

Nevertheless,  it  may  be  said  that  Mr.  Dickens's  genius  is  espe- 
cially suited  to  the  delineation  of  city  life.  London  is  like  a  news- 
paper. Everything  is  there,  and  everything  is  disconnected. 
There  is  every  kind  of  person  in  some  houses;  but  there  is  no 
more  connection  between  the  houses  than  between  the  neighbours 
in  the  lists  of  "births,  marriages,  and  deaths."  As  we  change 
from  the  broad  leader  to  the  squalid  police  report,  we  pass  a 
corner  and  we  are  in  a  changed  world.  This  is  advantageous  to 
Mr.  Dickens's  genius.  His  memory  is  full  of  instances  of  old 
buildings  and  curious  pe()j)le,  and  he  does  not  care  to  piece  them 

>  Old  Curiosity  Shop,  Chapter  XLVI. 


CHARLES  DICKENS  91 

together.  On  the  contrary,  each  scene,  to  his  mind,  is  a  separate 
scene,  —  each  street  a  separate  street.  He  has,  too,  the  pecuHar 
alertness  of  observation  that  is  observable  in  those  who  live  by  it. 
He  describes  London  like  a  special  correspondent  for  posterity. 

A  second  most  wonderful  special  faculty  which  Mr.  Dickens 
possesses  is  what  we  may  call  his  vivification  of  character,  or 
rather  of  characteristics.  His  marvellous  power  of  observation 
has  been  exercised  upon  men  and  women  even  more  than  upon 
town  or  country;  and  the  store  of  human  detail,  so  to  speak,  in 
his  books  is  endless  and  enormous.  The  boots  at  the  inn,  the 
pickpockets  in  the  street,  the  undertaker,  the  Mrs.  Gamp,  are 
all  of  them  at  his  disposal;  he  knows  each  trait  and  incident, 
and  he  invests  them  with  a  kind  of  perfection  in  detail  which  in 
reality  they  do  not  possess.  He  has  a  very  peculiar  power  of 
taking  hold  of  some  particular  traits,  and  making  a  character 
out  of  them.  He  is  especially  apt  to  incarnate  particular  pro- 
fessions in  this  way.  Many  of  his  people  never  speak  without 
some  allusion  to  their  occupation.  You  cannot  separate  them 
from  it.  Nor  does  the  writer  ever  separate  them.  What  would 
Mr.  Mould  ^  be  if  not  an  undertaker  ?  or  Mrs.  Gamp  ^  if  not  a 
nurse  ?  or  Charley  Bates  ^  if  not  a  pickpocket  ?  Not  only  is 
human  nature  in  them  subdued  to  what  it  works  in,  but  there 
seems  to  be  no  nature  to  subdue;  the  whole  character  is  the 
idealization  of  a  trade,  and  is  not  in  fancy  or  thought  distinguish- 
able from  it.  Accordingly,  of  necessity,  such  delineations  become 
caricatures.  We  do  not  in  general  contrast  them  with  reality; 
but  as  soon  as  we  do,  we  are  struck  with  the  monstrous  exaggera- 
tions which  they  present.  You  could  no  more  fancy  Sam  Weller, 
or  Mark  Tapley,  or  the  Artful  Dodger  *  really  existing,  walking 
about  among  common  ordinary  men  and  women,  than  you  can 
fancy  a  talking  duck  or  a  writing  bear.  They  are  utterly  beyond 
the  pale  of  ordinary  social  intercourse.  We  suspect,  indeed,  that 
Mr.  Dickens  does  not  conceive  his  characters  to  himself  as  mixing 
in  the  society  he  mixes  in.  He  sees  people  in  the  street,  doing  cer- 
tain things,  talking  in  a  certain  way,  and  his  fancy  petrifies  them 
in  the  act.  He  goes  on  fancying  hundreds  of  reduplications  of 
that  act  and  that  speech;  he  frames  an  existence  in  which  there 
is  nothing  else  but  that  aspect  which  attracted  his  attention. 
Sam  Weller  is  an  example.     He  is  a  man-servant,  who  makes  a 

'  In  Martin  Chuzzlewit.  ^  Ibid.  '  In  Oliver  Twist. 

*  In  the  Pickwick  Papers,  Martin  Chuzzlewit,  and  Oliver  Twist. 


92 


WALTER  BAGEHOT 


peculiar  kind  of  jokes,  and  is  wonderfully  felicitous  in  certain 
similes.     You  see  him  at  his  first  introduction:  — 

"  'My  friend,'  said  the  thin  gentleman. 

"'You're  one  o'  the  adwice  gratis  order,'  thought  Sam,  'or  you  wouldn't 
be  so  werry  fond  o'  me  all  at  once.'     But  he  only  said  —  'Well,  sir?' 

'"My  friend,'  said  the  thin  gentleman,  with  a  conciliatory  hem  —  'have 
you  got  many  people  stopping  here,  now?     Pretty  busy?     Eh?' 

"Sam  stole  a  look  at  the  inquirer.  He  was  a  little  high-dried  man,  with 
a  dark  squeezed-up  face,  and  small  restless  black  eyes,  that  kept  winking  and 
twinkling  on  each  side  of  his  little  inquisitive  nose,  as  if  they  were  playing 
a  perpetual  game  of  peep-bo  with  that  feature.  He  was  dressed  all  in  black, 
with  boots  as  shiny  as  his  eyes,  a  low  white  neckcloth,  and  a  clean  shirt  with 
a  frill  to  it.  A  gold  watch-chain  and  seals  depended  from  his  fob.  He  car- 
ried his  black  kid  gloves  in  his  hands,  not  on  them;  and,  as  he  spoke,  thrust 
his  wrists  beneath  his  coat-tails,  with  the  air  of  a  man  who  was  in  the  habit  of 
propounding  some  regular  posers. 

"'Pretty  busy,  eh?'    said  the  little  man. 

"'Oh,  werry  well,  sir,'  replied  Sam,  'we  shan't  be  bankrupts,  and  we 
shan't  make  our  fort'ns.  We  eat  our  biled  mutton  without  capers,  and  don't 
care  for  horse-radish  wen  ve  can  get  beef.' 

"'Ah,'  said  the  little  man,  'you're  a  wag,  ain't  you?' 

'"My  eldest  brother  was  troubled  with  that  complaint,'  said  Sam,  'it 
may  be  catching  —  I  used  to  sleep  with  him.' 

'"This  is  a  curious  old  house  of  yours,'  said  the  little  man,  looking  round 
him. 

"'If  you'd  sent  word  you  was  a-coming,  we'd  ha'  had  it  repaired,'  replied 
the  imperturbable  Sam. 

"The  little  man  seemed  rather  baffled  by  these  several  repulses,  and  a 
short  consultation  took  place  between  him  and  the  two  plump  gentlemen. 
At  its  conclusion,  the  little  man  took  a  pinch  of  snuff  from  an  oblong  silver 
box,  and  was  apparently  on  the  point  of  renewing  the  conversation,  when  one 
of  the  plump  gentlemen,  who,  in  addition  to  a  benevolent  countenance,  pos- 
sessed a  pair  of  spectacles  and  a  pair  of  black  gaiters,  interfered  — 

"'The  fact  of  the  matter  is,'  said  the  benevolent  gentleman,  'that  my  friend 
here  '  (pointing  to  the  other  plump  gentleman)  '  will  give  you  half  a  guinea,  if 
you'll  answer  one  or  two ' 

"'Now,  my  dear  sir  —  my  dear  sir,'  said  the  little  man,  'pray  allow  me  — 
my  dear  sir,  the  very  first  principle  to  be  observed  in  these  cases  is  this:  if 
you  place  a  matter  in  the  hands  of  a  professional  man,  you  must  in  no  way 
interfere  in  the  progress  of  the  business;  you  must  repose  implicit  confidence 
in  him.  Really,  Mr.'  (he  turned  to  the  other  plump  gentleman,  and  said)  — 
'I  forget  your  friend's  name.' 

"'Pickwick,'  said  Mr.  Wardle,  for  it  was  no  other  than  that  jolly  person- 
age. 

'"Ah,  Pickwick  —  really  Mr.  Pickwick,  my  dear  sir,  excuse  me  —  I 
shall  be  happy  to  receive  any  private  suggestions  of  yours,  as  amicus  curia, 
but  you  must  see  the  impropriety  of  your  interfering  with  my  conduct  in  this 
case,  with  such  an  ad  captandum  argument  as  the  offer  of  half  a  guinea. 
Really,  my  dear  sir,  really,'  and  the  little  man  took  an  argumentative  oinch  of 
snuff,  and  looked  very  profound. 


CHARLES  DICKENS  93 

"'My  only  wish,  sir,'  said  Mr.  Pickwick,  'was  to  bring  this  very  unpleas- 
ant matter  to  as  speedy  a  close  as  possible.' 

'"Quite  right  —  quite  right,'  said  the  little  man. 

'"With  which  view,'  continued  Mr.  Pickwick,  'I  made  use  of  the  argu- 
ment which  my  experience  of  men  has  taught  me  is  the  most  likely  to  succeed 
in  any  case.' 

"'Ay,  av,'  said  the  little  man,  'very  good,  very  good  indeed;  but  you 
should  have  suggested  it  to  V2e.  My  dear  sir,  I'm  quite  certain  you  cannot  be 
ignorant  of  the  e.xtent  of  confidence  which  must  be  placed  in  professional  men. 
If  any  authority  can  be  necessary  on  such  a  point,  my  dear  sir,  let  me  refer  you 
to  the  well-known  case  in  Barnwell  and ' 

"'Never  mind  George  Barnwell,'  interrupted  Sam,  who  had  remained  a 
wondering  listener  during  this  short  colloquy;  'everybody  knows  vat  sort  of 
a  case  his  was,  tho'  it's  always  been  my  opinion,  mind  you,  that  the  young 
'ooman  deserved  scragging  a  precious  sight  more  than  he  did.  Hows'ever, 
that's  neither  here  nor  there.  You  want  me  to  except  of  half  a  guinea. 
Werry  well,  I'm  agreeable:  I  can't  say  no  fairer  than  that,  can  I,  sir?'  (Mr. 
Pickwick  smiled.)  'Then  the  next  question  is,  what  the  devil  do  you  want 
with  me?  as  the  man  said  wen  he  see  the  ghost.' 

'"We  want  to  know '  said  Mr.  Wardle. 

"'Now,  my  dear  sir — my  dear  sir,'  interposed  the  busy  little  man. 

"Mr.  Wardle  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  was  silent. 

"'We  want  to  know,'  said  the  little  man  solemnly;  'and  we  ask  the  ques- 
tion of  you,  in  order  that  we  may  not  awaken  apprehensions  inside  —  we  want 
to  know  who  you've  got  in  this  house  at  present.' 

'"Who  there  is  in  the  house  1"  said  Sam,  in  whose  mind  the  inmates  were 
always  represented  by  that  particular  article  of  their  costume  which  came  un- 
der his  immediate  superintendence.  'There's  a  wooden  leg  in  number  six; 
there's  a  pair  of  Hessians  in  thirteen;  there's  two  pair  of  halves  in  the  com- 
mercial; there's  these  here  painted  tops  in  the  snuggery  inside  the  bar;  and 
five  more  tops  in  the  coffee-room.' 

"'Nothing  more?'  said  the  little  man. 

"'Stop  a  bit,'  replied  Sam,  suddenly  recollecting  himself.  'Yes;  there's 
a  pair  of  Wellingtons  a  good  deal  worn,  and  a  pair  o'  ladv's  shoes,  in  number 
five.' 

'"What  sort  of  shoes?'  hastily  inquired  Wardle,  who,  together  with  Mr. 
Pickwick,  had  been  lost  in  bewilderment  at  the  singular  catalogue  of  visitors. 

"'Country  make,'  replied  Sam. 

'"Anv  maker's  name?' 


"'Brown.' 
'"Where  of?' 


,     " 'Muggleton.' 

"'It  is  them,'  exclaimed  Wardle.     'By  Heavens,  we've  found  them.' 

"'Hush  1'   said  Sam.     'The  Wellingtons  has  gone  to  Doctors  Commons.' 

"'No,'  said  the  little  man. 

"'Yes,  for  a  license.' 

"'We're  in  time,'  exclaimed  Wardle.  'Show  us  the  room;  not  a  moment 
is  to  be  lost.' 

"'Pray,  my  dear  sir  —  pray,'  said  the  little  man;  'caution,  caution.' 
He  drew  from  his  pocket  a  red  silk  purse,  and  looked  very  hard  at  Sam  as  he 
drew  out  a  sovereign. 


94 


WALTER  BAGEHOT 


"Sam  grinned  expressively. 

"'Show  us  into  the  room  at  once,  without  announcing  us,'  said  the  little 
man,  'and  it's  yours.'"  '■ 

One  can  fancy  Mr.  Dickens  hearing  a  dialogue  of  this  sort,  — • 
not  nearly  so  good,  but  something  like  it,  —  and  immediately  setting 
to  work  to  make  it  better  and  put  it  in  a  book;  then  changing  a 
little  the  situation,  putting  the  boots  one  step  up  in  the  scale  of 
service,  engaging  him  as  footman  to  a  stout  gentleman  (but  without 
for  a  moment  losing  sight  of  the  peculiar  kind  of  professional 
conversation  and  humour  which  his  first  dialogue  presents),  and 
astonishing  all  his  readers  by  the  marvellous  fertility  and  magical 
humour  with  which  he  maintains  that  style.  Sam  Weller's  father 
is  even  a  stronger  and  simpler  instance.  He  is  simply  nothing 
but  an  old  coachman  of  the  stout  and  extinct  sort :  you  cannot 
separate  him  from  the  idea  of  that  occupation.  But  how  amusing 
he  is !  We  dare  not  quote  a  single  word  of  his  talk ;  because  we 
should  go  on  quoting  so  long,  and  every  one  knows  it  so  well.  Some 
persons  mav  think  that  this  is  not  a  very  high  species  of  delineative 
art.  The  idea  of  personifying  traits  and  trades  may  seem  to  them 
poor  and  meagre.  Anybody,  they  may  fancy,  can  do  that.  But 
how  would  they  do  it?  Whose  fancy  would  not  break  down  in 
a  page  —  in  five  lines?  Who  can  carry  on  the  vivification  with 
zest  and  energy  and  humour  for  volume  after  volume  ?  Endless 
fertility  in  laughter-causing  detail  is  Mr.  Dickens's  most  aston- 
ishing peculiarity.  It  requires  a  continuous  and  careful  reading 
of  his  works  to  be  aware  of  his  enormous  wealth.  Writers  have 
attained  the  greatest  reputation  for  wit  and  humour,  whose  whole 
works  do  not  contain  so  much  of  either  as  are  to  be  found  in  a  very 
few  pages  of  his. 

Mr.  Dickens's  humour  is  indeed  very  much  a  result  of  the  two 
peculiarities  of  which  we  have  been  speaking.  His  power  of 
detailed  observation  and  his  power  of  idealizing  individual  traits 
of  character  —  sometimes  of  one  or  other  of  them,  sometimes  of 
both  of  them  together.  His  similes  on  matters  of  e.xternal  obser- 
vation are  so  admirable  that  everybody  appreciates  them,  and 
it  would  be  absurd  to  quote  specimens  of  them ;  nor  is  it  the  sort 
of  excellence  which  best  bears  to  be  paraded  for  the  purposes  of 
critical  example.  Its  off-hand  air  and  natural  connection  with 
the  adjacent  circumstances  are  inherent  parts  of  its  peculiar  merit. 

'  Pickwick  Papers,  Chapter  IX. 


CHARLES  DICKENS  95 

Every  reader  of  Mr.  Dickens's  works  knows  well  what  we  mean. 
And  who  is  not  a  reader  of  them  ? 

But  his  peculiar  humour  is  even  more  indebted  to  his  habit  of 
vivifying  external  traits,  than  to  his  power  of  external  observation. 
He,  as  we  have  explained,  expands  traits  into  people;  and  it  is 
a  source  of  true  humour  to  place  these,  when  so  expanded,  in 
circumstances  in  which  only  people  —  that  is  complete  human 
beings  —  can  appropriately  act.  The  humour  of  Mr.  Pickwick's 
character  is  entirely  of  this  kind.  He  is  a  kind  of  incarnation  of 
simple-mindedness  and  what  we  may  call  obvious-mindedness. 
The  conclusion  which  each  occurrence  or  position  in  life  most 
immediately  presents  to  the  unsophisticated  mind  is  that  which 
Mr.  Pickwick  is  sure  to  accept.  The  proper  accompaniments 
are  given  to  him.  He  is  a  stout  gentleman  in  easy  circumstances, 
who  is  irritated  into  originality  by  no  impulse  from  within,  and 
by  no  stimulus  from  without.  He  is  stated  to  have  "retired  from 
business."  But  no  one  can  fancy  what  he  was  in  business.  Such 
guileless  simplicity  of  heart  and  easy  impressibility  of  disposition 
would  soon  have  induced  a  painful  failure  amid  the  harsh  struggles 
and  the  tempting  speculations  of  pecuniary  life.  As  he  is  repre- 
sented in  the  narrative,  however,  nobody  dreams  of  such  ante- 
cedents. Mr.  Pickwick  moves  easily  over  all  the  surface  of  Eng- 
lish life  from  Goswell  Street  to  Dingley  Dell,  from  Dingley  Dell 
to  the  Ipswich  elections,  from  drinking  milk-punch  in  a  wheel- 
barrow to  sleeping  in  the  approximate  pound,  and  no  one  ever 
thinks  of  applying  ta  him  the  ordinary  maxims  which  we  should 
apply  to  any  common  person  in  life,  or  to  any  common  personage 
in  a  fiction.  Nobody  thinks  it  is  wrong  in  Mr.  Pickwick  to  drink 
too  much  milk-punch  in  a  wheelbarrow,  to  introduce  worthless 
people  of  whom  he  knows  nothing  to  the  families  of  people  for 
whom  he  really  cares ;  nobody  holds  him  responsible  for  the  con- 
sequences; nobody  thinks  there  is  anything  wrong  in  his  taking 
Mr.  Bob  Sawyer  and  Mr.  Benjamin  Allen  to  visit  Mr.  Winkle, 
senior,  and  thereby  almost  irretrievably  offending  him  with  his 
son's  marriage.  We  do  not  reject  moral  remarks  such  as  these, 
but  they  never  occur  to  us.  Indeed,  the  indistinct  consciousness 
that  such  observations  are  possible,  and  that  they  are  hovering 
about  our  minds,  enhances  the  humour  of  the  narrative.  We 
are  in  a  conventional  world,  where  the  mere  maxims  of  common 
life  do  not  apply,  and  yet  which  has  all  the  amusing  detail,  and 
picturesque    elements,    and    singular    eccentricities    of    common 


96  WALTER  BAGEHOT 

life.  Mr.  Pickwick  is  a  personified  ideal;  a  kind  of  amateur  in 
life,  whose  course  we  watch  through  all  the  circumstances  of  ordi- 
nary existence,  and  at  whose  follies  we  are  amused  just  as  really 
skilled  people  are  at  the  mistakes  of  an  amateur  in  their  art.  His 
being  in  the  pound  is  not  wrong;  his  being  the  victim  of  Messrs. 
Dodson  is  not  foolish.  "Always  shout  with  the  mob,"  said  Mr. 
Pickwick.  "  But  suppose  there  are  two  mobs,"  said  Mr.  Snodgrass. 
"Then  shout  with  the  loudest,"  said  Mr.  Pickwick.  This  is  not 
in  him  weakness  or  time-serving,  or  want  of  principle,  as  in  most 
even  of  fictitious  people  it  would  be.  It  is  his  way.  Mr.  Pick- 
wick was  expected  to  say  something,  so  he  said  "Ah !"  in  a  grave 
voice.  This  is  not  pompous  as  we  might  fancy,  or  clever  as  it 
might  be,  if  intentionally  devised;  it  is  simply  his  way.  Mr. 
Pickwick  gets  late  at  night  over  the  wall  behind  the  back-door  of 
a  young-ladies'  school,  is  found  in  that  sequestered  place  by  the 
schoolmistress  and  the  boarders  and  the  cook,  and  there  is  a 
dialogue  between  them.^  There  is  nothing  out  of  possibility  in 
this;  it  is  his  way.  The  humour  essentially  consists  in  treating 
as  a  moral  agent  a  being  who  really  is  not  a  moral  agent.  We 
treat  a  vivified  accident  as  a  man,  and  we  are  surprised  at  the 
absurd  results.  We  are  reading  about  an  acting  thing,  and  we 
wonder  at  its  scrapes,  and  laugh  at  them  as  if  they  were  those  of 
the  man.  There  is  something  of  this  humour  in  every  sort  of 
farce.  Everybody  knows  these  are  not  real  beings  acting  in  real 
life,  though  they  talk  as  if  they  were,  and  want  us  to  believe  that 
they  are.  Here,  as  in  Mr.  Dickens's  books,  we  have  exaggerations 
pretending  to  comport  themselves  as  ordinary  beings,  caricatures 
acting  as  if  they  were  characters. 

At  the  same  time  it  is  essential  to  remember,  that  however  great 
may  be  and  is  the  charm  of  such  exaggerated  personifications, 
the  best  specimens  of  them  are  immensely  less  excellent,  belong  to 
an  altogether  lower  range  of  intellectual  achievements,  than  the  real 
depiction  of  actual  living  men.  It  is  amusing  to  read  of  beings 
out  of  the  laws  of  morality,  but  it  is  more  profoundly  interesting, 
as  well  as  more  instructive,  to  read  of  those  whose  life  in  its  moral 
conditions  resembles  our  own.  We  see  this  most  distinctly  when 
both  representations  are  given  by  the  genius  of  one  and  the  same 
writer.  Falstaff  is  a  sort  of  sack-holding  paunch,  an  exaggerated 
overdevelopment  which  no  one  thinks  of  holding  down  to  the 
commonplace  rules  of  the  ten  commandments  and  the  statute- 

'  Chapter  XVI. 


CHARLES  DICKENS  97 

law.  We  do  not  think  of  them  in  connection  with  him.  They 
belong  to  a  world  apart.  Accordingly,  we  are  vexed  when  the 
king  discards  him  and  reproves  him.  Such  a  fate  was  a  necessary 
adherence  on  Shakespeare's  part  to  the  historical  tradition;  he 
never  probably  thought  of  departing  from  it,  nor  would  his  audi- 
ence have  perhaps  endured  his  doing  so.  But  to  those  who  look 
at  the  historical  plays  as  pure  works  of  imaginative  art,  it  seems 
certainly  an  artistic  misconception  to  have  developed  so  mar- 
vellous an  7/7?moral  impersonation,  and  then  to  have  subjected 
it  to  an  ethical  and  punitive  judgment.  Still,  notwithstanding 
this  error,  which  was  very  likely  inevitable,  Falstaff  is  probably 
the  most  remarkable  specimen  of  caricature-representation  to 
be  found  in  literature.  And  its  very  excellence  of  execution  only 
shows  how  inferior  is  the  kind  of  art  which  creates  only  such 
representations.  Who  could  compare  the  genius,  marvellous 
as  must  be  its  fertility,  which  was  needful  to  create  a  FalstafT, 
with  that  shown  in  the  higher  productions  of  the  same  mind  in 
Hamlet,  Ophelia,  and  Lear?  We  feel  instantaneously  the  differ- 
ence between  the  aggregating  accident  which  rakes  up  from  the 
externalities  of  life  other  accidents  analogous  to  itself,  and  the 
central  ideal  of  a  real  character  which  cannot  show  itself  wholly 
in  any  accidents,  but  which  exemplifies  itself  partially  in  many, 
which  unfolds  itself  gradually  in  wide  spheres  of  action,  and  yet, 
as  with  those  we  know  best  in  life,  leaves  something  hardly  to  be 
understood,  and  after  years  of  familiarity  is  a  problem  and  a 
difficulty  to  the  last.  In  the  same  way,  the  embodied  character- 
istics and  grotesque  exaggerations  of  Mr.  Dickens,  notwithstanding 
all  their  humour  and  all  their  marvellous  abundance,  can  never 
be  for  a  moment  compared  with  the  great  works  of  the  real  painters 
of  essential  human  nature. 

There  is  one  class  of  Mr.  Dickens's  pictures  which  may  seem 
to  form  an  exception  to  this  criticism.  It  is  the  delineation  of 
the  outlaw,  we  might  say  the  anti-law,  world  in  Oliver  TivisL 
In  one  or  two  instances  Mr.  Dickens  has  been  so  fortunate  as  to 
hit  on  characteristics  which,  by  his  system  of  idealization  and  con- 
tinual repetition,  might  really  be  brought  to  look  like  a  character. 
A  man's  trade  or  profession  in  regular  life  can  only  exhaust  a 
very  small  portion  of  his  nature;  no  approach  is  made  to  the 
essence  of  humanity  by  the  exaggeration  of  the  traits  which  typify 
a  beadle  or  an  undertaker.  With  the  outlaw  world  it  is  somewhat 
different.     The  bare  fact  of  a  man  belonging  to  the  world  is  so 

H 


98  WALTER  BAGEHOT 

important  to  his  nature,  that  if  it  is  artistically  developed  with 
coherent  accessories,  some  approximation  to  a  distinctly  natural 
character  will  be  almost  inevitably  made.  In  the  characters  of 
Bill  Sykes  and  Nancy  this  is  so.  The  former  is  the  skulkin^f 
ruffian  who  may  be  seen  any  day  at  the  police-courts,  and  whom 
any  one  may  fancy  he  sees  by  walking  through  St.  Giles's.  You 
cannot  attempt  to  figure  to  your  imagination  the  existence  of  such 
a  person  without  being  thrown  into  the  region  of  the  passions, 
the  will,  and  the  conscience;  the  mere  fact  of  his  maintaining, 
as  a  condition  of  life  and  by  settled  profession,  a  struggle  with 
regular  society,  necessarily  brings  these  deep  parts  of  his  nature 
into  prominence;  great  crime  usually  proceeds  from  abnormal 
impulses  or  strange  effort.  Accordingly,  Mr.  Sykes  is  the  char- 
acter most  approaching  to  a  coherent  man  who  is  to  be  found  in 
Mr.  Dickens's  works.  We  do  not  say  that  even  here  there  is  not 
some  undue  heightening  admixture  of  caricature,  —  but  this 
defect  is  scarcely  thought  of  amid  the  general  coherence  of  the 
picture,  the  painful  subject,  and  the  wonderful  command  of 
strange  accessories.  Miss  Nancy  is  a  still  more  delicate  artistic 
effort.  She  is  an  idealization  of  the  girl  who  may  also  be  seen  at 
the  police-courts  and  St.  Giles's;  as  bad,  according  to  occupation 
and  common  character,  as  a  woman  can  be,  yet  retaining  a  tinge 
of  womanhood,  and  a  certain  compassion  for  interesting  suffering, 
which  under  favouring  circumstances  might  be  the  germ  of  a 
regenerating  influence.  We  need  not  stay  to  prove  how  much 
the  imaginative  development  of  such  a  personage  must  concern 
itself  with  our  deeper  humanity;  how  strongly,  if  excellent,  it 
must  be  contrasted  with  everything  conventional  or  casual  or 
superficial.  Mr.  Dickens's  delineation  is  in  the  highest  degree 
excellent.  It  possesses  not  only  the  more  obvious  merits  belonging 
to  the  subject,  but  also  that  of  a  singular  delicacy  of  expression 
and  idea.  Nobody  fancies  for  a  moment  that  they  are  reading 
about  anything  beyond  the  pale  of  ordinary  propriety.  We  read 
the  account  of  the  life  which  Miss  Nancy  leads  with  Bill  Sykes 
without  such  an  idea  occurring  to  us:  yet  when  we  reflect  upon 
it,  few  things  in  literary  painting  are  more  wonderful  than  the 
depiction  of  a  professional  life  of  sin  and  sorrow,  so  as  not  even 
to  startle  those  to  whom  the  deeper  forms  of  either  are  but  names 
and  shadows.  Other  writers  would  have  given  as  vivid  a  picture : 
Defoe  would  have  poured  out  even  a  more  copious  measure  of 
telling  circumstantiality,  but  he  would  have  narrated  his  story 


CHARLES  DICKENS  99 

with  an  inhuman  distinctness,  which  if  not  impure  is  impure; 
French  writers,  whom  we  need  not  name,  would  have  enhanced 
the  interest  of  their  narrative  by  trading  on  the  excitement  of 
stimulating  scenes.  It  would  be  injustice  to  Mr.  Dickens  to  say 
that  he  has  surmounted  these  temptations;  the  unconscious 
evidence  of  innumerable  details  proves  that,  from  a  certain  deli- 
cacy of  imagination  and  purity  of  spirit,  he  has  not  even  experi- 
enced them.  Criticism  is  the  more  bound  to  dwell  at  length  on 
the  merits  of  these  delineations,  because  no  artistic  merit  can 
make  Oliver  Twist  a  pleasing  work.  The  squalid  detail  of  crime 
and  misery  oppresses  us  too  much.  If  it  is  to  be  read  at  all,  it 
should  be  read  in  the  first  hardness  of  the  youthful  imagination, 
which  no  touch  can  move  too  deeply,  and  which  is  never  stirred 
with  tremulous  suffering  at  the  "still  sad  music  of  humanity."  ^ 
The  coldest  critic  in  later  life  may  never  hope  to  have  again  the 
apathy  of  his  boyhood. 

It  perhaps  follows  from  what  has  been  said  of  the  character- 
istics of  Mr.  Dickens's  genius,  that  it  would  be  little  skilled  in 
planning  plots  for  his  novels.  He  certainly  is  not  so  skilled.  He 
says  in  his  preface  to  the  Pickwick  Papers  "that  they  were  designed 
for  the  introduction  of  diverting  characters  and  incidents;  that 
no  ingenuity  of  plot  was  attempted,  or  even  at  that  time  considered 
feasible  by  the  author  in  connection  with  the  desultory  plan  of 
publication  adopted;"  and  he  adds  an  e.xpression  of  regret  that 
"these  chapters  had  not  been  strung  together  on  a  thread  of  more 
general  interest."  It  is  extremely  fortunate  that  no  such  attempt 
was  made.  In  the  cases  in  which  Mr.  Dickens  has  attempted 
to  make  a  long  connected  story,  or  to  develop  into  scenes  or  inci- 
dents a  plan  in  any  degree  elaborate,  the  result  has  been  a  complete 
failure.  A  certain  consistency  of  genius  seems  necessary  for  the 
construction  of  a  consecutive  plot.  An  irregular  mind  naturally 
shows  itself  in  incoherency  of  incident  and  aberration  of  character. 
The  method  in  which  Mr.  Dickens's  mind  works,  if  we  are  correct 
in  our  criticism  upon  it,  tends  naturally  to  these  blemishes.  Cari- 
catures are  necessarily  isolated;  they  are  produced  by  the  exag- 
geration of  certain  conspicuous  traits  and  features;  each  being 
is  enlarged  on  its  greatest  side;  and  we  laugh  at  the  grotesque 
grouping  and  the  startling  contrast.  But  that  connection  between 
human  beings  on  which  a  plot  depends  is  rather  severed  than 
elucidated  by  the  enhancement  of  their  diversities.     Interesting 

1  Wordsworth,  "Tintern  Abbey." 


lOO  WALTER   BAGEHOT 

stories  are  founded  on  the  intimate  relations  of  men  and  women. 
These  intimate  relations  are  based  not  on  their  superficial  traits, 
or  common  occupations,  or  most  visible  externalities,  but  on  the 
inner  life  of  heart  and  feeling.  You  simply  divert  attention  from 
that  secret  life  by  enhancing  the  perceptible  diversities  of  common 
human  nature,  and  the  strange  anomalies  into  which  it  may  be 
distorted.  The  original  germ  of  Pickwick  was  a  "Club  of  Oddi- 
ties." The  idea  was  professedly  abandoned;  but  traces  of  it  are 
to  be  found  in  all  Mr.  Dickens's  books.  It  illustrates  the  pro- 
fessed grotesqueness  of  the  characters  as  well  as  their  slender  con- 
nection. 

The  defect  of  plot  is  heightened  by  Mr.  Dickens's  great,  we 
might  say  complete,  inability  to  make  a  love-story.  A  pair  of 
lovers  is  by  custom  a  necessity  of  narrative  fiction,  and  writers 
who  possess  a  great  general  range  of  mundane  knowledge,  and 
but  little  knowledge  of  the  special  sentimental  subject,  are  often 
in  amusing  difficulties.  The  watchful  reader  observes  the  transi- 
tion from  the  hearty  description  of  well-known  scenes,  of  pro- 
saic streets,  or  journeys  by  wood  and  river,  to  the  pale  colours  of 
ill-attempted  poetry,  to  such  sights  as  the  novelist  evidently  wishes 
that  he  need  not  try  to  see.  But  few  writers  exhibit  the  difficulty 
in  so  aggravated  a  form  as  Mr.  Dickens.  Most  men  by  taking 
thought  can  make  a  lay  figure  to  look  not  so  very  unlike  a  young 
gentleman,  and  can  compose  a  telling  schedule  of  ladylike  charms. 
Mr.  Dickens  has  no  power  of  doing  either.  The  heroic  character 
—  we  do  not  mean  the  form  of  character  so  called  in  life  and  action, 
but  that  which  is  hereditary  in  the  heroes  of  novels  —  is  not 
suited  to  his  style  of  art.  Hazlitt  wrote  an  essay  to  inquire  "Why 
the  heroes  of  romances  are  insipid;"  and  without  going  that 
length  it  may  safely  be  said  that  the  character  of  the  agreeable 
young  gentleman  who  loves  and  is  loved  should  not  l)e  of  the  most 
marked  sort.  Flirtation  ought  not  to  be  an  exaggerated  pursuit. 
Young  ladies  and  their  admirers  should  not  exj^ress  themselves 
in  the  heightened  and  imaginative  phraseology  suited  to  Charley 
Bates  and  the  Dodger.  Humour  is  of  no  use,  for  no  one  makes 
love  in  jokes :  a  tinge  of  insidious  satire  may  perhaps  be  per- 
mitted as  a  rare  and  occasional  relief,  but  it  will  not  be  thought 
"a  pretty  book,"  if  so  malicious  an  element  be  at  all  habitually 
perceptible.  The  broad  farce  in  which  Mr.  Dickens  indulges 
is  thoroughly  out  of  place.  If  you  caricature  a  pair  of  lovers  ever 
so  little,  by  the  necessity  of  their  calling  you  make  them  ridicu- 


CHARLES  DICKENS  lOI 

lous.  One  of  Sheridan's  best  comedies  '  is  remarkable  for  havinj:; 
no  scene  in  which  the  hero  and  heroine  are  on  the  stage  together; 
and  Mr.  Moore  suggests  ^  that  the  shrewd  wit  distrusted  his  skill 
in  the  light,  dropping  love-talk  which  would  have  been  necessary. 
Mr.  Dickens  would  have  done  well  to  imitate  so  astute  a  policy; 
but  he  has  none  of  the  managing  shrewdness  which  those  who 
look  at  Sheridan's  career  attentively  will  probably  think  not  the 
least  remarkable  feature  in  his  singular  character.  Mr.  Dickens, 
on  the  contrary,  pours  out  painful  sentiments  as  if  he  wished  the 
abundance  should  make  up  for  the  inferior  quality.  The  excru- 
ciating writing  which  is  expended  on  Miss  Ruth  Pinch  ^  passes 
belief.  Mr.  Dickens  is  not  only  unable  to  make  lovers  talk,  but 
to  describe  heroines  in  mere  narrative.  As  has  been  said,  most 
men  can  make  a  jumble  of  blue  eyes  and  fair  hair  and  pearly  teeth, 
that  does  very  well  for  a  young  lady,  at  least  for  a  good  while; 
but  Mr.  Dickens  will  not,  probably  cannot,  attain  even  to  this 
humble  measure  of  descriptive  art.  He  vitiates  the  repose  by 
broad  humour,  or  disenchants  the  delicacy  by  an  unctuous  admira- 
tion. 

This  deficiency  is  probably  nearly  connected  with  one  of  Mr. 
Dickens's  most  remarkable  excellences.  No  one  can  read  Mr. 
Thackeray's  writings  without  feeling  that  he  is  perpetually  tread- 
ing as  close  as  he  dare  to  the  border-line  that  separates  the  world 
which  may  be  described  in  books  from  the  world  which  it  is  pro- 
hibited so  to  describe.  No  one  knows  better  than  this  accomplished 
artist  where  that  line  is,  and  how  curious  are  its  windings  and  turns. 
The  charge  against  him  is  that  he  knows  it  but  too  well ;  that  with 
an  anxious  care  and  a  wistful  eye  he  is  ever  approximating  to  its 
edge,  and  hinting  with  subtle  art  how  thoroughly  he  is  familiar 
with,  and  how  interesting  he  could  make,  the  interdicted  region  on 
the  other  side.  He  never  violates  a  single  conventional  rule;  but 
at  the  same  time  the  shadow  of  the  immorality  that  is  not  seen  is 
scarcely  ever  wanting  to  his  delineation  of  the  society  that  is  seen. 
Every  one  may  perceive  what  is  passing  in  his  fancy.  Mr.  Dickens 
is  chargeable  with  no  such  defect :  he  does  not  seem  to  feel  the  temp- 
tation. By  what  we  may  fairly  call  an  instinctive  purity  of  genius, 
he  not  only  observes  the  conventional  rules,  but  makes  excursions 
into  topics  which  no  other  novelist  could  safely  handle,  and,  by  a 
felicitous  instinct,  deprives  them  of  all  impropriety.     No  other 

»  "  School  for  Scandal."  2  Life  of  Sheridan,  Vol.  I,  Chapter  V. 

^  In  Martin  Chuzzlewit. 


I02  WALTER  BAGEHOT 

writer  could  have  managed  the  humour  of  Mrs.  Gamp  without 
becoming  unendurable.  At  the  same  time  it  is  difBcult  not  to  be- 
lieve that  this  singular  insensibility  to  the  temptations  to  which 
many  of  the  greatest  novelists  have  succumbed  is  in  some  measure 
connected  with  his  utter  inaptitude  for  delineating  the  portion  of 
life  to  which  their  art  is  specially  inclined.  He  delineates  neither 
the  love-affairs  which  ought  to  be,  nor  those  which  ought  not  to 
be. 

Mr.  Dickens's  indisposition  to  "make  capital"  out  of  the  most 
commonly  tempting  part  of  human  sentiment  is  the  more  remark- 
able because  he  certainly  does  not  show  the  same  indisposition  in 
other  cases.  He  has  naturally  great  powers  of  pathos ;  his  imagi- 
nation is  familiar  with  the  common  sort  of  human  suffering; 
and  his  marvellous  conversancy  with  the  detail  of  existence  enables 
him  to  describe  sick-beds  and  death-beds  with  an  excellence  very 
rarely  seen  in  literature.  A  nature  far  more  sympathetic  than  that 
of  most  authors  has  familiarized  him  with  such  subjects.  In 
general,  a  certain  apathy  is  characteristic  of  book-writers,  and 
dulls  the  efhcacy  of  their  pathos.  Mr.  Dickens  is  quite  exempt 
from  this  defect ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  is  exceedingly  prone  to  a 
very  ostentatious  exhibition  of  the  opposite  excellence.  He  dwells 
on  dismal  scenes  with  a  kind  of  fawning  fondness;  and  he  seems 
unwilHng  to  leave  them,  long  after  his  readers  have  had  more  than 
enough  of  them.  He  describes  Mr.  Dennis  the  hangman  ^  as 
having  a  professional  fondness  for  his  occupation :  he  has  the  same 
sort  of  fondness  apparently  for  the  profession  of  death-painter. 
The  painful  details  he  accumulates  are  a  very  serious  drawback 
from  the  agreeableness  of  his  writings.  Dismal  "light  hterature" 
is  the  dismalest  of  reading.  The  reality  of  the  police  reports  is 
sufhciently  bad,  but  a  fictitious  police  report  would  be  the  most 
disagreeable  of  conceival)le  compositions.  Some  portions  of  Mr. 
Dickens's  books  are  hable  to  a  good  many  of  the  same  objections. 
They  are  squalid  from  noisome  trivialities,  and  horrid  with  terrify- 
ing crime.  In  his  earlier  books  this  is  commonly  relieved  at  fre- 
quent intervals  by  a  graphic  and  original  mirth.  As,  we  will  not 
say  age,  but  maturity,  has  passed  over  his  powers,  this  counterac- 
tive clement  has  been  lessened;  the  humour  is  not  so  happy  as  it 
was,  but  the  wonderful  fertility  in  painful  minitt'uc  still  remains. 

Mr.  Dickens's  political  opinions  have  subjected  him  to  a  good 
deal  of  criticism,  and  to  some  ridicule.     He  has  shown,  on  many 

'  In  Barnahy  Rudge. 


CHARLES   DICKENS  103 

occasions,  the  desire  —  which  we  see  so  frequent  among  able  and 
influential  men  —  to  start  as  a  political  reformer.  Mr.  Spurgeon 
said,  with  an  application  to  himself:  "If  you've  got  the  ear  of  the 
public,  of  course  you  must  begin  to  tell  it  its  faults."  Mr.  Dickens 
has  been  quite  disposed  to  make  this  use  of  his  popular  influence. 
Even  in  Pickwick  there  are  many  traces  of  this  tendency;  and  the 
way  in  which  it  shows  itself  in  that  book  and  in  others  is  very  char- 
acteristic of  the  time  at  which  they  appeared.  The  most  instruc- 
tive political  characteristic  of  the  years  1825  to  1845  is  the  growth 
and  influence  of  the  scheme  of  opinion  which  we  call  Radicalism. 
There  are  several  species  of  creeds  which  are  comprehended  under 
this  generic  name,  but  they  all  evince  a  marked  reaction  against  the 
worship  of  the  English  constitution  and  the  affection  for  the  Eng- 
lish status  quo,  which  were  then  the  established  creed  and  senti- 
ment. Ah  Radicals  are  Anti-Eldonites.  This  is  equally  true  of 
the  Benthamite  or  philosophical  radicalism  of  the  early  period, 
and  the  Manchester,  or  "definite-grievance  radicalism,"  among  the 
last  vestiges  of  which  we  are  now  living.  Mr.  Dickens  represents 
a  species  different  from  either.  His  is  what  we  may  call  the  "sen- 
timental radicalism";  and  if  we  recur  to  the  history  of  the  time, 
we  shall  find  that  there  would  not  originally  have  been  any  oppro- 
brium attaching  to  such  a  name.  The  whole  course  of  the  legis- 
lation, and  still  more  of  the  administration,  of  the  first  twenty 
years  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  marked  by  a  harsh  unfeeling- 
ness  which  is  of  all  faults  the  most  contrary  to  any  with  which  we 
are  chargeable  now.  The  world  of  the  "Six  Acts,"  ^  of  the  fre- 
quent executions,  of  the  Draconic  criminal  law,  is  so  far  removed 
from  us  that  we  cannot  comprehend  its  having  ever  existed.  It 
is  more  easy  to  understand  the  recoil  which  has  followed.  All 
the  social  speculation,  and  much  of  the  social  action  of  the  few  years 
succeeding  the  Reform  Bill,  bear  the  most  marked  traces  of  the 
reaction.  The  spirit  which  animates  Mr.  Dickens's  political 
reasonings  and  observations  expresses  it  exactly.  The  vice  of  the 
then  existing  social  authorities,  and  of  the  then  existing  public, 
had  been  the  forgetfulness  of  the  pain  which  their  own  acts  evi- 
dently produced,  —  an  unrealizing  habit  which  adhered  to  official 
rules  and  established  maxims,  and  which  would  not  be  shocked 
by   the   evident   consequences,   by   proximate   human   suffering. 

1  Of  23d  November,  3d  December,  and  17th  December,  i8iq;  introduced  by 
Eldon,  Sidmouth,  and  Castlereagh,  to  put  down  sedition,  just  after  the  Manchester 
massacre  and  the  Cato  Street  conspiracy.     (Forrest  Morgan.) 


I04  WALTER   BAGEHOT 

The  sure  result  of  this  habit  was  the  excitement  of  the  habit  pre- 
cisely opposed  to  it.  Mr.  Carlyle,  in  his  Chartism,  we  think, 
observes  of  the  poor-law  reform:  "It  was  then,  above  all  things, 
necessary  that  outdoor  relief  should  cease.  But  how?  What 
means  did  great  Nature  take  for  accomplishing  that  most  desirable 
end  ?  She  created  a  race  of  men  who  believed  the  cessation  of  out- 
door relief  to  be  the  one  thing  needful."  In  the  same  way,  and 
by  the  same  propensity  to  exaggerated  opposition  which  is  inherent 
in  human  nature,  the  unfeeling  obtuseness  of  the  early  part  of  this 
century  was  to  be  corrected  by  an  extreme,  perhaps  an  excessive, 
sensibility  to  human  suffering  in  the  years  which  have  followed. 
There  was  most  adequate  reason  for  the  sentiment  in  its  origin, 
and  it  had  a  great  task  to  perform  in  ameliorating  harsh  customs 
and  repealing  dreadful  penalties ;  but  it  has  continued  to  repine  at 
such  evils  long  after  they  ceased  to  exist,  and  when  the  only  facts 
that  at  all  resemble  them  are  the  necessary  painfulness  of  due 
punishment  and  the  necessary  rigidity  of  established  law.  Mr. 
Dickens  is  an  example  both  of  the  proper  use  and  of  the  abuse  of  the 
sentiment.  His  earlier  works  have  many  excellent  descriptions 
of  the  abuses  which  had  descended  to  the  present  generation  from 
others  whose  sympathy  with  pain  was  less  tender.  Nothing  can  be 
better  than  the  description  of  the  poor  debtors'  gaol  in  Pickwick, 
or  of  the  old  parochial  authorities  in  Oliver  Twist.  No  doubt  these 
descriptions  are  caricatures,  all  his  delineations  are  so;  but  the 
beneficial  use  of  such  art  can  hardly  be  better  exemplified.  Hu- 
man nature  endures  the  aggravation  of  vices  and  foibles  in  written 
description  better  than  that  of  excellences.  We  cannot  bear  to 
hear  even  the  hero  of  a  book  forever  called  "just";  we  detest 
the  recurring  praise  even  of  beauty,  much  more  of  virtue.  The 
moment  you  begin  to  exaggerate  a  character  of  true  excellence, 
you  spoil  it ;  the  traits  are  too  delicate  not  to  be  injured  by  heighten- 
ing, or  marred  by  overemphasis.  But  a  beadle  is  made  for  cari- 
cature. The  slight  measure  of  pomposity  that  humanizes  his 
unfeelingness  introduces  the  requisite  comic  element;  even  the 
turnkeys  of  a  debtors'  prison  may  by  skilful  hands  be  similarly  used. 
The  contrast  between  the  destitute  condition  of  Job  Trotter  and 
Mr.  Jingle  and  their  former  swindling  triumph  is  made  comic  by 
a  rarer  touch  of  unconscious  art.  Jvlr.  Pickwick's  warm  heart 
takes  so  eager  an  interest  in  the  misery  of  his  old  enemies,  that  our 
colder  nature  is  tempted  to  smile.  We  endure  the  over-intensity, 
at  any  rate  the  unnecessary  aggravation,  of  the  surrounding  misery; 


CHARLES  DICKENS  1 05 

and  we  endure  it  willingly,  because  it  brings  out  better  than  any- 
thing else  could  have  done  the  half-comic  intensity  of  a  sympathetic 
nature. 

It  is  painful  to  pass  from  these  happy  instances  of  well-used 
power  to  the  glaring  abuses  of  the  same  faculty  in  Mr.  Dickens's 
later  books.  He  began  by  describing  really  removable  evils  in  a 
style  which  would  induce  all  persons,  however  insensible,  to  remove 
them  if  they  could;  he  has  ended  by  describing  the  natural  evils 
and  inevitable  pains  of  the  present  state  of  being,  in  such  a  manner 
as  must  tend  to  excite  discontent  and  repining.  The  result  is 
aggravated,  because  Mr.  Dickens  never  ceases  to  hint  that  these 
evils  are  removable,  though  he  does  not  say  by  what  means. 
Nothing  is  easier  than  to  show  the  evils  of  anything.  ISIr.  Dickens 
has  not  unfrequently  spoken,  and,  what  is  worse,  he  has  taught  a 
great  number  of  parrot-like  imitators  to  speak,  in  what  really  is, 
if  they  knew  it,  a  tone  of  objection  to  the  necessary  constitution  of 
human  society.  If  you  will  only  write  a  description  of  it,  any  form 
of  government  will  seem  ridiculous.  What  is  more  absurd  than  a 
despotism,  even  at  its  best  ?  A  king  of  ability  or  an  able  minister 
sits  in  an  orderly  room  filled  with  memorials,  and  returns,  and 
documents,  and  memoranda.  These  are  his  world ;  among  these 
he  of  necessity  lives  and  moves.  Yet  how  little  of  the  real  life  of 
the  nation  he  governs  can  be  represented  in  an  official  form  !  How 
much  of  real  suffering  is  there  that  statistics  can  never  tell !  how 
much  of  obvious  good  is  there  that  no  memorandum  to  a  minister 
will  ever  mention !  how  much  deception  is  there  in  what  such 
documents  contain !  how  monstrous  must  be  the  ignorance  of  the 
closet  statesman,  after  all  his  life  of  labour,  of  much  that  a  plough- 
man could  tell  him  of !  A  free  government  is  almost  worse,  as  it 
must  read  in  a  written  delineation.  Instead  of  the  real  attention 
of  a  laborious  and  anxious  statesman,  we  have  now  the  shifting 
caprices  of  a  popular  assembly  —  elected  for  one  object,  deciding 
on  another;  changing  with  the  turn  of  debate;  shifting  in  its  very 
composition;  one  set  of  men  coming  down  to  vote  to-day,  to- 
morrow another  and  often  unlike  set,  most  of  them  eager  for  the 
dinner-hour,  actuated  by  unseen  influences,  by  a  respect  for  their 
constituents,  by  the  dread  of  an  attorney  in  a  far-off  borough. 
What  people  are  these  to  control  a  nation's  destinies,  and  wield 
the  power  of  an  empire,  and  regulate  the  happiness  of  millions ! 
Either  way  we  are  at  fault.  Free  government  seems  an  absurdity, 
and  despotism  is  so  too.     Again,  every  form  of  law  has  a  distinct 


Io6  WALTER   BAGEHOT 

expression,  a  rigid  procedure,  customary  rules  and  forms.  It  is 
administered  by  human  beings  liable  to  mistake,  confusion,  and 
forgetfulncss,  and  in  the  long  run,  and  on  the  average,  is  sure  to  be 
tainted  with  vice  and  fraud.  Nothing  can  be  easier  than  to  make 
a  case,  as  we  may  say,  against  any  particular  system,  by  pointing 
out  with  emphatic  caricature  its  inevitable  miscarriages,  and  by 
pointing  out  nothing  else.  Those  who  so  address  us  may  assume 
a  tone  of  philanthropy,  and  forever  exult  that  they  are  not  so  unfeel- 
ing as  other  men  are;  but  the  real  tendency  of  their  exhortations 
is  to  make  men  dissatisfied  with  their  inevitable  condition,  and, 
what  is  worse,  to  make  them  fancy  that  its  irremediable  evils  can 
be  remedied,  and  indulge  in  a  succession  of  vague  strivings  and 
restless  changes.  Such,  however  —  though  in  a  style  of  expres- 
sion somewhat  different  —  is  very  much  the  tone  with  which  Mr. 
Dickens  and  his  followers  have  in  later  years  made  us  familiar. 
To  the  second-hand  repeaters  of  a  cry  so  feeble,  we  can  have  noth- 
ing to  say;  if  silly  people  cry  because  they  think  the  world  is  silly, 
let  them  cry;  but  the  founder  of  the  school  cannot,  we  are  per- 
suaded, peruse  without  mirth  the  lachrymose  eloquence  which  his 
disciples  have  perpetrated.  The  soft  moisture  of  irrelevant  senti- 
ment cannot  have  entirely  entered  into  his  soul.  A  truthful 
genius  must  have  forbidden  it.  Let  us  hope  that  his  pernicious 
example  may  incite  some  one  of  equal  genius  to  preach  with  equal 
efiEiciency  a  sterner  and  a  wiser  gospel;  but  there  is  no  need  just 
now  for  us  to  preach  it  w-ithout  genius. 

There  has  been  much  controversy  about  Mr.  Dickens's  taste. 
A  great  many  cultivated  people  will  scarcely  concede  that  he  has 
any  taste  at  all;  a  still  larger  number  of  fervent  admirers  point, 
on  the  other  hand,  to  a  hundred  felicitous  descriptions  and  delinea- 
tions w^hich  abound  in  apt  expressions  and  skilful  turns  and  happy 
images,  —  in  which  it  would  be  impossible  to  alter  a  single  word 
without  altering  for  the  worse ;  and  naturally  inquire  whether  such 
excellences  in  what  is  written  do  not  indicate  good  taste  in  the 
writer.  The  truth  is,  that  Mr.  Dickens  has  what  we  may  call 
creative  taste;  that  is  to  say,  the  habit  or  faculty,  whichever 
w^e  may  choose  to  call  it,  which  at  the  critical  instant  of  artistic 
production  offers  to  the  mind  the  right  word,  and  the  right  word 
only.  If  he  is  engaged  on  a  good  subject  for  caricature,  there  will 
be  no  defect  of  taste  to  preclude  the  caricature  from  being  excel- 
lent. But  it  is  only  in  moments  of  imaginative  production  that  he 
has  any  taste  at  all.     His  works  nowhere  indicate  that  he  possesses 


CHARLES  DICKENS  I07 

in  any  degree  the  passive  taste  which  decides  what  is  good  in  the 
writings  of  other  people,  and  what  is  not,  and  which  performs  the 
same  critical  duty  upon  a  writer's  own  efforts  when  the  confusing 
mists  of  productive  imagination  have  passed  away.  Nor  has  Mr. 
Dickens  the  gentlemanly  instinct  which  in  many  minds  supplies 
the  place  of  purely  critical  discernment,  and  which,  by  constant 
association  with  those  who  know  what  is  best,  acquires  a  second- 
hand perception  of  that  which  is  best.  He  has  no  tendency  to  con- 
ventionalism for  good  or  for  evil ;  his  merits  are  far  removed  from 
the  ordinary  path  of  writers,  and  it  was  not  probably  so  much 
effort  to  him  as  to  other  men  to  step  so  far  out  of  that  path :  he 
scarcely  knew  how  far  it  was.  For  the  same  reason,  he  cannot 
tell  how  faulty  his  writing  will  often  be  thought,  for  he  cannot 
tell  what  people  will  think. 

A  few  pedantic  critics  have  regretted  that  Mr.  Dickens  had  not 
received  what  they  call  a  regular  education.  And  if  we  under- 
stand their  meaning,  we  believe  they  mean  to  regret  that  he  had  not 
received  a  course  of  discipline  which  would  probably  have  impaired 
his  powers.  A  regular  education  should  mean  that  ordinary 
system  of  regulation  and  instruction  which  experience  has  shown  to 
fiit  men  best  for  the  ordinary  pursuits  of  life.  It  applies  the  requi- 
site discipline  to  each  faculty  in  the  exact  proportion  in  which 
that  faculty  is  wanted  in  the  pursuits  of  life;  it  develops  under- 
standing, and  memory,  and  imagination,  each  in  accordance  with 
the  scale  prescribed.  To  men  of  ordinary  faculties  this  is  nearly 
essential;  it  is  the  only  mode  in  which  they  can  be  fitted  for  the 
inevitable  competition  of  existence.  To  men  of  regular  and  sym- 
metrical genius  also,  such  a  training  will  often  be  beneficial.  The 
world  knows  pretty  well  what  are  the  great  tasks  of  the  human  mind, 
and  has  learned  in  the  course  of  ages  with  some  accuracy  what  is 
the  kind  of  culture  likely  to  promote  their  exact  performance.  A 
man  of  abilities  extraordinary  in  degree  but  harmonious  in  pro- 
portion will  be  the  better  for  having  submitted  to  the  kind  of  dis- 
cipline which  has  been  ascertained  to  fit  a  man  for  the  work  to 
which  powers  in  that  proportion  are  best  fitted;  he  will  do  what 
he  has  to  do  better  and  more  gracefully ;  culture  will  add  a  touch 
to  the  finish  of  nature.  But  the  case  is  very  dift"erent  with  men  of 
irregular  and  anomalous  genius,  whose  excellences  consist  in  the 
aggravation  of  some  special  faculty,  or  at  the  most  one  or  two. 
The  discipline  which  will  fit  such  a  man  for  the  production  of  great 
literary  works  is  that  which  will  most  develop  the  peculiar  powers 


Io8  WALTER  BAGEHOT 

in  which  he  excels;  the  rest  of  the  mind  will  be  far  less  important; 
it  will  not  be  likely  that  the  culture  which  is  adapted  to  promote  this 
special  development  will  also  be  that  which  is  most  fitted  for  ex- 
panding the  powers  of  common  men  in  common  directions.  The 
precise  problem  is  to  develop  the  powers  of  a  strange  man  in  a 
strange  direction.  In  the  case  of  Mr.  Dickens,  it  would  have 
been  absurd  to  have  shut  up  his  observant  youth  within  the  walls 
of  a  college.  They  would  have  taught  him  nothing  about  Mrs. 
Gamp  there;  Sam  Weller  took  no  degree.  The  kind  of  early 
life  fitted  to  develop  the  power  of  apprehensive  observation  is  a 
brooding  life  in  stirring  scenes;  the  idler  in  the  streets  of  life  knows 
the  streets;  the  bystander  knows  the  picturesque  effect  of  life 
better  than  the  player;  and  the  meditative  idler  amid  the  hum  of 
existence  is  much  more  likely  to  know  its  sound  and  to  take  in  and 
comprehend  its  depths  and  meanings  than  the  scholastic  student 
intent  on  books,  which,  if  they  represent  any  world,  represent  one 
which  has  long  passed  away,  —  which  commonly  try  rather  to 
develop  the  reasoning  understanding  than  the  seeing  observation, 
—  which  are  written  in  languages  that  have  long  been  dead. 
You  will  not  train  by  such  discipline  a  caricaturist  of  obvious 
manners. 

Perhaps,  too,  a  regular  instruction  and  daily  experience  of  the 
searching  ridicule  of  critical  associates  would  have  detracted 
from  the  pluck  which  Mr.  Dickens  shows  in  all  his  writings.  It 
requires  a  great  deal  of  courage  to  be  a  humorous  writer;  you  are 
always  afraid  that  people  will  laugh  at  you  instead  of  with  you: 
undoubtedly  there  is  a  certain  eccentricity  about  it.  You  take  up 
the  esteemed  writers,  Thucydides  and  the  Saturday  Review; 
after  all,  they  do  not  make  you  laugh.  It  is  not  the  function  of 
really  artistic  productions  to  contribute  to  the  mirth  of  human 
beings.  All  sensible  men  are  afraid  of  it,  and  it  is  only  with  an 
extreme  effort  that  a  printed  joke  attains  to  the  perusal  of  the  pub- 
lic :  the  chances  are  many  to  one  that  the  anxious  producer  loses 
heart  in  the  correction  of  the  press,  and  that  the  world  never 
laughs  at  all.  Mr.  Dickens  is  quite  exempt  from  this  weakness. 
He  has  what  a  Frenchman  might  call  the  courage  of  his  faculty. 
The  real  daring  which  is  shown  in  the  Pickwick  Papers,  in  the  whole 
character  of  Mr.  Weller  senior,  as  well  as  in  that  of  his  son,  is 
immense,  far  surpassing  any  which  has  been  shown  by  any  other 
contemporary  writer.  The  brooding  irregular  mind  is  in  its  first 
stage  prone  to  this  sort  of  courage.     It  perhaps  knows  that  its 


CHARLES  DICKENS  lOQ 

ideas  are  "out  of  the  way";  but  with  the  infantine  simplicity  of 
youth,  it  supposes  that  originaHty  is  an  advantage.  Persons  'nore 
familiar  with  the  ridicule  of  their  equals  in  station  (and  this  is  to 
most  men  the  great  instructress  of  the  college  time)  well  know 
that  of  all  qualities  this  one  most  requires  to  be  clipped  and  pared 
and  measured.  Posterity,  we  doubt  not,  will  be  entirely  perfect 
in  every  conceivable  element  of  judgment ;  but  the  existing  genera- 
tion like  what  they  have  heard  before  —  it  is  much  easier.  It  re- 
quired great  courage  in  Mr.  Dickens  to  write  what  his  genius  has 
compelled  them  to  appreciate. 

We  have  throughout  spoken  of  Mr.  Dickens  as  he  was,  rather 
than  as  he  is ;  or,  to  use  a  less  discourteous  phrase,  and  we  hope  a 
truer,  of  his  early  works  rather  than  of  those  which  are  more 
recent.  We  could  not  do  otherwise  consistently  with  the  true  code 
of  criticism.  A  man  of  great  genius,  who  has  written  great  and 
enduring  works,  must  be  judged  mainly  by  them;  and  not  by  the 
inferior  productions  which,  from  the  necessities  of  personal  posi- 
tion, a  fatal  facility  of  composition,  or  other  cause,  he  may  pour  forth 
at  moments  less  favourable  to  his  powers.  Those  who  are  called 
on  to  review  these  inferior  productions  themselves,  must  speak 
of  them  in  the  terms  they  may  deserve ;  but  those  who  have  the  more 
pleasant  task  of  estimating  as  a  whole  the  genius  of  the  writer, 
may  confine  their  attention  almost  wholly  to  those  happier  efforts 
which  illustrate  that  genius.  We  should  not  like  to  have  to  speak 
in  detail  of  Mr.  Dickens's  later  works,  and  we  have  not  done  so. 
There  are,  indeed,  peculiar  reasons  why  a  genius  constituted  as  his 
is  (at  least  if  we  are  correct  in  the  view  which  we  have  taken  of  it) 
would  not  endure  without  injury  during  a  long  life  the  applause 
of  the  many,  the  temptations  of  composition,  and  the  general  ex- 
citement of  existence.  Even  in  his  earlier  works  it  was  impossible 
not  to  fancy  that  there  was  a  weakness  of  fibre  unfavourable  to  the 
longevity  of  excellence.  This  was  the  effect  of  his  deficiency  in 
those  masculine  faculties  of  which  we  have  said  so  much,  —  the 
reasoning  understanding  and  firm  far-seeing  sagacity.  It  is  these 
two  component  elements  which  stiffen  the  mind,  and  give  a  con- 
sistency to  the  creed  and  a  coherence  to  its  effects,  —  which  enable 
it  to  protect  itself  from  the  rush  of  circumstances.  If  to  a  deficiency 
in  these  we  add  an  extreme  sensibility  to  circumstances,  —  a 
mobility,  as  Lord  Byron  used  to  call  it,  of  emotion,  which  is  easily 
impressed,  and  stifl  more  easily  carried  away  by  impression,  — 
we  have  the  idea  of  a  character  peculiarly  unfitted  to  bear  the  flux 


no  WALTER   BAGEHOT 

of  time  and  chance.  A  man  of  very  great  determination  could 
hardly  bear  up  against  them  with  such  slight  aids  from  within  and 
with  such  peculiar  sensibility  to  temptation.  A  man  of  merely, 
ordinary  determination  would  succumb  to  it;  and  Mr.  Dickens 
has  succumbed.  His  position  was  certainly  unfavourable.  He 
has  told  us  that  the  works  of  his  later  years,  inferior  as  all  good 
critics  have  deemed  them,  have  yet  been  more  read  than  those  of 
his  earlier  and  healthier  years.  The  most  characteristic  part  of  his 
audience,  the  lower  middle-class,  were  ready  to  receive  with  de- 
light the  least  favourable  productions  of  genius.  Human  nature 
cannot  endure  this ;  it  is  too  much  to  have  to  endure  a  coincident 
temptation  both  from  within  and  from  without.  Mr.  Dickens  was 
too  much  inclined  by  natural  disposition  to  lachrymose  eloquence 
and  exaggerated  caricature.  Such  was  the  kind  of  writing  which 
he  wrote  most  easily.  He  found  likewise  that  such  was  the  kind 
of  writing  that  was  read  most  readily ;  and  of  course  he  wrote  that 
kind.  Who  would  have  done  otherwise?  No  critic  is  entitled 
to  speak  very  harshly  of  such  degeneracy,  if  he  is  not  sure  that  he 
could  have  coped  with  difficulties  so  peculiar.  If  that  rule  is  to 
be  observed,  who  is  there  that  will  not  be  silent?  No  other  Eng- 
lishman has  attained  such  a  hold  on  the  vast  populace ;  it  is  little, 
therefore,  to  say  that  no  other  has  surmounted  its  attendant  temp- 
tations. 


VI 

WALTER  PATER 

(1839-1894) 

WORDSWORTH 

[From  Appreciations,  1889.  First  published  in  the  Fortnightly  Review 
for  April,  1874.] 

Some  English  critics  at  the  beginning  of  the  present  century- 
had  a  great  deal  to  say  concerning  a  distinction,  of  much  impor- 
tance, as  they  thought,  in  the  true  estimate  of  poetry,  between  the 
Fancy,  and  another  more  powerful  faculty  —  the  Imagination. 
This  metaphysical  distinction,  borrowed  originally  from  the 
writings  of  German  philosophers,  and  perhaps  not  always  clearly 
apprehended  by  those  who  talked  of  it,  involved  a  far  deeper  and 
more  vital  distinction,  with  which  indeed  all  true  criticism  more  or 
less  directly  has  to  do,  the  distinction,  namely,  between  higher 
and  lower  degrees  of  intensity  in  the  poet's  perception  of  his  subject, 
and  in  his  concentration  of  himself  upon  his  work.  Of  those  who 
dwelt  upon  the  metaphysical  distinction  between  the  Fancy  and  the 
Imagination,  it  was  Wordsworth  who  made  the  most  of  it,  assum- 
ing it  as  the  basis  for  the  final  classification  of  his  poetical  writings; 
and  it  is  in  these  writings  that  the  deeper  and  more  vital  distinc- 
tion, which,  as  I  have  said,  underlies  the  metaphysical  distinction, 
is  most  needed,  and  may  best  be  illustrated. 

For  nowhere  is  there  so  perplexed  a  mixture  as  in  Wordsworth's 
own  poetry,  of  work  touched  with  intense  and  individual  power, 
with  work  of  almost  no  character  at  all.  He  has  much  conven- 
tional sentiment,  and  some  of  that  insincere  poetic  diction,  against 
which  his  most  serious  critical  efforts  were  directed :  the  reaction 
in  his  political  ideas,  consequent  on  the  excesses  of  1795,  makes 
him,  at  times,  a  mere  declaimer  on  moral  and  social  topics;  and 
he  seems,  sometimes,  to  force  an  unwilling  pen,  and  write  by  rule. 
By  making  the  most  of  these  blemishes  it  is  possible  to  obscure  the 

III 


112  WALTER  PATER 

true  aesthetic  value  of  his  work,  just  as  his  life  also,  a  life  of  much 
quiet  delicacy  and  independence,  might  easily  be  placed  in  a  false 
focus,  and  made  to  appear  a  somewhat  tame  theme  in  illustration 
of  the  more  obvious  parochial  virtues.  And  those  who  wish  to 
understand  his  influence,  and  experience  his  peculiar  savour,  must 
bear  with  patience  the  presence  of  an  alien  element  in  Words- 
worth's work,  which  never  coalesced  with  what  is  really  delightful 
in  it,  nor  underwent  his  special  power.  Who  that  values  his  writ- 
ings most  has  not  felt  the  intrusion  there,  from  time  to  time,  of 
something  tedious  and  prosaic?  Of  all  poets  equally  great,  he 
would  gain  most  by  a  skilfully  made  anthology.  Such  a  selection 
would  show,  in  truth,  not  so  much  what  he  was,  or  to  himself  or 
others  seemed  to  be,  as  what,  by  the  more  energetic  and  fertile 
quality  in  his  writings,  he  was  ever  tending  to  become.  And  the 
mixture  in  his  work,  as  it  actually  stands,  is  so  perplexed,  that  one 
fears  to  miss  the  least  promising  composition  even,  lest  some  pre- 
cious morsel  should  be  lying  hidden  within  —  the  few  perfect  lines, 
the  phrase,  the  single  word  perhaps,  to  which  he  often  works  up 
mechanically  through  a  poem,  almost  the  whole  of  which  may  be 
tame  enough.  He  who  thought  that  in  all  creative  work  the  larger 
part  was  given  passively,  to  the  recipient  mind,  who  waited  so  duti- 
fully upon  the  gift,  to  whom  so  large  a  measure  was  sometimes 
given,  had  his  times  also  of  desertion  and  relapse;  and  he  has  per- 
mitted the  impress  of  these  too  to  remain  in  his  work.  And  this 
duality  there  —  the  fitfulness  with  which  the  higher  qualities  mani- 
fest themselves  in  it,  gives  the  effect  in  his  poetry  of  a  power  not 
ahogether  his  own,  or  under  his  control,  which  comes  and  goes 
when  it  will,  lifting  or  lowering  a  matter,  poor  in  itself;  so  that  that 
old  fancy  which  made  the  poet's  art  an  enthusiasm,  a  form  of  divine 
possession,  seems  almost  literally  true  of  him. 

This  constant  suggestion  of  an  absolute  duality  between  higher 
and  lower  moods,  and  the  work  done  in  them,  stimulating  one 
always  to  look  below  the  surface,  makes  the  reading  of  Wordsworth 
an  excellent  sort  of  training  towards  the  things  of  art  and  poetry. 
It  begets  in  those,  who,  coming  across  him  in  youth,  can  bear  him 
at  all,  a  habit  of  reading  between  the  lines,  a  faith  in  the  effect  of 
concentration  and  coUectedness  of  mind  in  the  right  appreciation 
of  poetry,  an  expectation  of  things,  in  this  order,  coming  to  one  by 
means  of  a  right  discipline  of  the  temper  as  well  as  of  the  intellect. 
He  meets  us  with  the  promise  that  he  has  much,  and  something 
very  peculiar,  to  give  us,  if  we  will  follow  a  certain  difhcult  way, 


WORDSWORTH  II3 

and  seems  to  have  the  secret  of  a  special  and  privileged  state  of 
mind.  And  those  who  have  undergone  his  influence,  and  followed 
this  difficul:  way,  are  like  people  who  have  passed  through  some 
initiation,  a  disciplina  arcani,^  by  submitting  to  which  they  become 
able  constantly  to  distinguish  in  art,  speech,  feeling,  manners,  that 
which  is  organic,  animated,  expressive,  from  that  which  is  only  con- 
ventional, derivative,  inexpressive. 

But  although  the  necessity  of  selecting  these  precious  morsels 
for  one's  self  is  an  opportunity  for  the  exercise  of  Wordsworth's 
peculiar  influence,  and  induces  a  kind  of  just  criticism  and  true 
estimate  of  it,  yet  the  purely  literary  product  would  have  been 
more  excellent,  had  the  writer  himself  purged  away  that  alien  ele- 
ment. How  perfect  would  have  been  the  little  treasury,  shut  be- 
tween the  covers  of  how  thin  a  book  !  Let  us  suppose  the  desired 
separation  made,  the  electric  thread  untwined,  the  golden  pieces, 
great  and  small,  lying  apart  together.^  What  are  the  peculiarities 
of  this  residue?  What  special  sense  does  Wordsworth  exercise, 
and  what  instincts  does  he  satisfy?  What  are  the  subjects  and 
the  motives  which  in  him  excite  the  imaginative  faculty?  What 
are  the  qualities  in  things  and  persons  which  he  values,  the  impres- 
sion and  sense  of  which  he  can  convey  to  others,  in  an  extra- 
ordinary way  ? 

An  intimate  consciousness  of  the  expression  of  natural  things, 
which  weighs,  listens,  penetrates,  where  the  earlier  mind  passed 
roughly  by,  is  a  large  element  in  the  complexion  of  modern  pbetry. 
It  has  been  remarked  as  a  fact  in  mental  history  again  and  again. 
It  reveals  itself  in  many  forms;  but  is  strongest  and  most  attrac- 
tive in  what  is  strongest  and  most  attractive  in  modern  literature. 
It  is  exemplified,  almost  equally,  by  writers  as  unlike  each  other  as 
Senancour  and  Theophile  Gautier:  as  a  singular  chapter  in  the 
history  of  the  human  mind,  its  growth  might  be  traced  from  Rous- 
seau to  Chateaubriand,  from  Chateaubriand  to  Victor  Hugo:  it 
has  doubtless  some  latent  connection  with  those  pantheistic  theories 
which  locate  an  intelligent  soul  in  material  things,  and  have  largely 
exercised  men's  minds  in  some  modern  systems  of  philosophy: 
it  is  traceable  even  in  the  graver  writings  of  historians :  it  makes 
as  much  difference  between  ancient  and  modern  landscape  art, 

'  [A  training  in  solving  mystery.] 

^  Since  this  essay  was  written,  such  selections  have  been  made,  with  excellent 
taste,  by  Matthew  Arnold  and  Professor  Knight. 

I 


114  WALTER  PATER 

as  there  is  between  the  rough  masks  of  an  early  mosaic  and  a  por- 
trait by  Reynolds  or  Gainsborough.  Of  this  new  sense,  the  writ- 
ings of  Wordsworth  are  the  central  and  elementary  expression: 
he  is  more  simply  and  entirely  occupied  with  it  than  any  other  poet, 
though  there  are  fine  expressions  of  precisely  the  same  thing  in  so 
different  a  poet  as  Shelley.  There  was  in  his  own  character  a 
certain  contentment,  a  sort  of  inborn  religious  placidity,  seldom 
found  united  with  a  sensibility  so  mobile  as  his,  which  was  favour- 
able to  the  quiet,  habitual  observation  of  inanimate,  or  imperfectly 
animate,  existence.  His  life  of  eighty  years  is  divided  by  no  very 
profoundly  felt  incidents:  its  changes  are  almost  wholly  inward, 
and  it  falls  into  broad,  untroubled,  perhaps  somewhat  monotonous 
spaces.  What  it  most  resembles  is  the  life  of  one  of  those  early 
Italian  or  Flemish  painters,  who,  just  because  their  minds  were 
full  of  heavenly  visions,  passed,  some  of  them,  the  better  part  of 
sixty  years  in  quiet,  systematic  industry.  This  placid  life  matured 
a  quite  unusual  sensibility,  really  innate  in  him,  to  the  sights  and 
sounds  of  the  natural  world  —  the  flower  and  its  shadow  on  the 
stone,  the  cuckoo  and  its  echo.  The  poem  of  Resolution  and  Inde- 
pendence is  a  storehouse  of  such  records :  for  its  fulness  of  imagery 
it  may  be  compared  to  Keats's  Saint  Agnes'  Eve.  To  read  one  of 
his  longer  pastoral  poems  for  the  first  time,  is  like  a  day  spent  in  a 
new  country :  the  memory  is  crowded  for  a  while  with  its  precise 
and  vivid  incidents :  — 

"  The  pliant  harebell  swinging  in  the  breeze 
On  some  grey  roclc"  ;  — 

"  The  single  sheep  and  the  one  blasted  tree 
And  the  bleak,  music  from  that  old  stone  wall" ; 

"And  in  the  meadows  and  the  lower  grounds 
Was  all  the  sweetness  of  a  common  dawn"  ;  — 

"  And  that  green  corn  all  day  is  rustling  in  thine  ears." 

Clear  and  delicate  at  once,  as  he  is  in  the  outlining  of  visible 
imagery,  he  is  more  clear  and  delicate  still,  and  finely  scrupulous, 
in  the  noting  of  sounds ;  so  that  he  conceives  of  noble  sound  as  even 
moulding  the  human  countenance  to  nobler  types,  and  as  something 
actually  "profaned "  by  colour,  by  visible  form,  or  image.  He  has 
a  power  likewise  of  realizing,  and  conveying  to  the  consciousness  of 
the  reader,  abstract  and  elementary  impressions  —  silence,  dark- 
ness, absolute  motionlessness :   or,  again,  the  whole  complex  sen- 


WORDSWORTH  II5 

timent  of  a  particular  place,  the  abstract  expression  of  desolation 
in  the  long  white  road,  of  peacefulness  in  a  particular  folding  of  the 
hills.  In  the  airy  building  of  the  brain,  a  special  day  or  hour  even, 
comes  to  have  for  him  a  sort  of  personal  identity,  a  spirit  or  angel 
given  to  it,  by  which,  for  its  exceptional  insight,  or  the  happy  light 
upon  it,  it  has  a  presence  in  one's  history,  and  acts  there,  as  a  sepa- 
rate power  or  accomplishment ;  and  he  has  celebrated  in  many  of 
his  poems  the  "efficacious  spirit,"  which,  as  he  says,  resides  in 
these  "particular  spots"  of  time. 

It  is  to  such  a  world,  and  to  a  world  of  congruous  meditation 
thereon,  that  we  see  him  retiring  in  his  but  lately  published  poem 
of  The  Recluse  —  taking  leave,  without  much  count  of  costs,  of  the 
world  of  business,  of  action  and  ambition,  as  also  of  all  that  for 
the  majority  of  mankind  counts  as  sensuous  enjoyment.^ 

'  In  Wordsworth's  prefatory  advertisement  to  the  first  edition  of  The  Prelude, 
pubUshed  in  1850,  it  is  stated  that  the  work  was  intended  to  be  introductory  to  The 
Recluse;  and  that  The  Recluse,  if  completed,  would  have  consisted  of  three  parts. 
The  second  part  is  The  Excursion.  The  third  part  was  only  planned;  but  the 
first  book  of  the  first  part  was  left  in  manuscript  by  Wordsworth  —  though  in 
manuscript,  it  is  said,  in  no  great  condition  of  forwardness  for  the  printers.  This 
book,  now  for  the  first  time  printed  in  exlenso  (a  very  noble  passage  from  it  found 
place  in  that  prose  advertisement  to  The  Excursion),  is  included  in  the  latest  edi- 
tion of  Wordsworth  by  Mr.  John  Morley.  It  was  well  worth  adding  to  the  poet's 
great  bequest  to  English  literature.  A  true  student  of  his  work,  who  has  formu- 
lated for  himself  what  he  supposes  to  be  the  leading  characteristics  of  Wordsworth's 
genius,  will  feel,  we  think,  lively  interest  in  testing  them  by  the  various  fine  pas- 
sages in  what  is  here  presented  for  the  first  time.  Let  the  following  serve  for  a 
sample :  — 

Thickets  full  of  songsters,  and  the  voice 

Of  lordly  birds,  an  unexpected  sound 

Heard  now  and  then  from  morn  to  latest  eve, 

Admonishing  the  man  who  walks  below 

Of  solitude  and  silence  in  the  sky:  — 

These  have  we,  and  a  thousand  nooks  of  earth 

Have  also  these,  but  nowhere  else  is  found, 

Nowhere  (or  is  it  fancy?)  can  be  found 

The  one  sensation  that  is  here;    'tis  here, 

Here  as  it  found  its  way  into  my  heart 

In  childhood,  here  as  it  abides  by  day, 

By  night,  here  only;   or  in  chosen  minds 

That  take  it  with  them  hence,  where'er  they  go. 

—  'Tis,  but  I  cannot  name  it,  'tis  the  sense 

Of  majesty,  and  beauty,  and  repose, 

A  blended  holiness  of  earth  and  sky, 

Something  that  makes  this  individual  spot 

This  small  abiding-place  of  many  men, 

A  termination,  and  a  last  retreat, 

A  centre,  come  from  wheresoe'er  you  will, 

A  whole  without  dependence  or  defect, 

Made  for  itself,  and  happy  in  itself. 

Perfect  contentment,  Unity  entire. 


Il6  WALTER   PATER 

And  so  it  came  about  that  this  sense  of  a  life  in  natural  objects, 
which  in  most  poetry  is  but  a  rhetorical  artifice,  is  with  Wordsworth 
the  assertion  of  what  for  him  is  almost  literal  fact.  To  him  every 
natural  object  seemed  to  possess  more  or  less  of  a  moral  or  spiritual 
life,  to  be  capable  of  a  companionship  with  man,  full  of  expression, 
of  inexplicable  afl&nities  and  delicacies  of  intercourse.  An  emana- 
tion, a  particular  spirit,  belonged,  not  to  the  moving  leaves  or  water 
only,  but  to  the  distant  peak  of  the  hills  arising  suddenly,  by  some 
change  of  perspective,  above  the  nearer  horizon,  to  the  passing  space 
of  light  across  the  plain,  to  the  lichened  Druidic  stone  even,  for  a 
certain  weird  fellowship  in  it  with  the  moods  of  men.  It  was  like 
a  "survival,"  in  the  peculiar  intellectual  temperament  of  a  man  of 
letters  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  of  that  primitive  condi- 
tion, which  some  philosophers  have  traced  in  the  general  history 
of  human  culture,  wherein  all  outward  objects  alike,  including  even 
the  works  of  men's  hands,  were  believed  to  be  endowed  with  ani- 
mation, and  the  world  was  "full  of  souls"  —  that  mood  in  which 
the  old  Greek  gods  were  first  begotten,  and  which  had  many  strange 
aftergrowths. 

In  the  early  ages,  this  belief,  delightful  as  its  effects  on  poetry 
often  are,  was  but  the  result  of  a  crude  intelligence.  But,  in  Words- 
worth, such  power  of  seeing  life,  such  perception  of  a  soul,  in  inani- 
mate things,  came  of  an  exceptional  susceptibility  to  the  impres- 
sions of  eye  and  ear,  and  was,  in  its  essence,  a  kind  of  sensuousness. 
At  least,  it  is  only  in  a  temperament  exceptionally  susceptible  on 
the  sensuous  side,  that  this  sense  of  the  expressiveness  of  outward 
things  comes  to  be  so  large  a  part  of  life.  That  he  awakened  "a 
sort  of  thought  in  sense,"  is  Shelley's  just  estimate  of  this  element 
in  Wordsworth's  poetry. 

And  it  was  through  nature,  thus  ennobled  by  a  semblance  of 
passion  and  thought,  that  he  approached  the  spectacle  of  human 
life.  Human  life,  indeed,  is  for  him,  at  first,  only  an  additional, 
accidental  grace  on  an  expressive  landscape.  When  he  thought 
of  man,  it  was  of  man  as  in  the  presence  and  under  the  influence  of 
these  effective  natural  objects,  and  linked  to  them  by  many  asso- 
ciations. The  close  connection  of  man  with  natural  objects,  the 
habitual  association  of  his  thoughts  and  feelings  with  a  particular 
spot  of  earth,  has  sometimes  seemed  to  degrade  those  who  are  sub- 
ject to  its  influence,  as  if  it  did  but  reenforce  that  physical  connection 
of  our  nature  with  the  actual  lime  and  clay  of  the  soil,  which  is 
always  drawing  us  nearer  to  our  end.     But  for  Wordsworth,  these 


WORDSWORTH  1 1  7 

influences  tended  to  the  dignity  of  human  nature,  because  they 
tended  to  tranquillize  it.  By  raising  nature  to  the  level  of  human 
thought  he  gives  it  power  and  expression :  he  subdues  man  to  the 
level  of  nature,  and  gives  him  thereby  a  certain  breadth  and  cool- 
ness and  solemnity.  The  leech-gatherer  on  the  moor,  the  woman 
"stepping  westward,"  are  for  him  natural  objects,  almost  in  the 
same  sense  as  the  aged  thorn,  or  the  lichened  rock  on  the  heath. 
In  this  sense  the  leader  of  the  "  Lake  School,"  in  spite  of  an  earnest 
preoccupation  with  man,  his  thoughts,  his  destiny,  is  the  poet  of 
nature.  And  of  nature,  after  all,  in  its  modesty.  The  English 
lake  country  has,  of  course,  its  grandeurs.  But  the  peculiar  func- 
tion of  Wordsworth's  genius,  as  carrying  in  it  a  power  to  open  out 
the  soul  of  apparently  little  or  familiar  things,  would  have  found  its 
true  test  had  he  become  the  poet  of  Surrey,  say !  and  the  prophet 
of  its  life.  The  glories  of  Italy  and  Switzerland,  though  he  did 
write  a  little  about  them,  had  too  potent  a  material  life  of  their  own 
to  serve  greatly  his  poetic  purpose. 

Religious  sentiment,  consecrating  the  affections  and  natural 
regrets  of  the  human  heart,  above  all,  that  pitiful  awe  and  care  for 
the  perishing  human  clay,  of  which  relic- worship  is  but  the  corrup- 
tion, has  always  had  much  to  do  with  localities,  with  the  thoughts 
which  attach  themselves  to  actual  scenes  and  places.  Now  what 
is  true  of  it  everywhere,  is  truest  of  it  in  those  secluded  valleys 
where  one  generation  after  another  maintains  the  same  abiding- 
place;  and  it  was  on  this  side,  that  Wordsworth  apprehended 
religion  most  strongly.  Consisting,  as  it  did  so  much,  in  the  recog- 
nition of  local  sanctities,  in  the  habit  of  connecting  the  stones  and 
trees  of  a  particular  spot  of  earth  with  the  great  events  of  life,  till 
the  low  walls,  the  green  mounds,  the  half-obliterated  epitaphs 
seemed  full  of  voices,  and  a  sort  of  natural  oracles,  the  very  religion 
of  these  people  of  the  dales  appeared  but  as  another  link  between 
them  and  the  earth,  and  was  literally  a  religion  of  nature.  It 
tranquillized  them  by  bringing  them  under  the  placid  rule  of  tra- 
ditional and  narrowly  localized  observances.  "Grave  livers," 
they  seemed  to  him,  under  this  aspect,  with  stately  speech,  and 
something  of  that  natural  dignity  of  manners,  which  underlies 
the  highest  courtesy. 

And,  seeing  man  thus  as  a  part  of  nature,  elevated  and  solem- 
nized in  proportion  as  his  daily  life  and  occupations  brought  him 
into  companionship  with  permanent  natural  objects,  his  very 
religion  forming  new  links  for  him  with  the  narrow  limits  of  the 


Il8  WALTER  PATER 

valley,  the  low  vaults  of  his  church,  the  rough  stones  of  his  home, 
made  intense  for  him  now  with  profound  sentiment,  Wordsworth 
was  able  to  appreciate  passion  in  the  lowly.  He  chooses  to  depict 
people  from  humble  life,  because,  being  nearer  to  nature  than 
others,  they  are  on  the  whole  more  impassioned,  certainly  more 
direct  in  their  expression  of  passion,  than  other  men  :  it  is  for  this 
direct  expression  of  passion,  that  he  values  their  humble  words. 
In  much  that  he  said  in  exaltation  of  rural  life,  he  was  but  pleading 
indirectly  for  that  sincerity,  that  perfect  fidelity  to  one's  own 
inward  presentations,  to  the  precise  features  of  the  picture  within, 
without  which  any  profound  poetry  is  impossible.  It  was  not  for 
their  tameness,  but  for  this  passionate  sincerity,  that  he  chose  inci- 
dents and  situations  from  common  life,  "related  in  a  selection  of 
language  really  used  by  men."  He  constantly  endeavours  to 
bring  his  language  near  to  the  real  language  of  men :  to  the  real 
language  of  men,  however,  not  on  the  dead  level  of  their  ordinary 
intercourse,  but  in  select  moments  of  vivid  sensation,  when  this 
language  is  winnowed  and  ennobled  by  excitement.  There  are 
poets  who  have  chosen  rural  life  as  their  subject,  for  the  sake  of  its 
passionless  repose,  and  times  when  Wordsworth  himself  extols 
the  mere  calm  and  dispassionate  survey  of  things  as  the  highest 
aim  of  poetical  culture.  But  it  was  not  for  such  passionless  calm 
that  he  preferred  the  scenes  of  pastoral  life;  and  the  meditative 
poet,  sheltering  himself,  as  it  might  seem,  from  the  agitations  of 
the  outward  world,  is  in  reality  only  clearing  the  scene  for  the  great 
exhibitions  of  emotion,  and  what  he  values  most  is  the  almost  ele- 
mentary expression  of  elementary  feelings. 

And  so  he  has  much  for  those  who  value  highly  the  concentrated 
presentment  of  passion,  who  appraise  men  and  women  by  their 
susceptibility  to  it,  and  art  and  poetry  as  they  afford  the  spectacle 
of  it.  Breaking  from  time  to  time  into  the  pensive  spectacle  of  thei  ■ 
daily  toil,  their  occupations  near  to  nature,  come  those  great  ele- 
mentary feelings,  lifting  and  solemnizing  their  language  and  giving 
it  a  natural  music.  The  great,  distinguishing  passion  came  to 
Michael  by  the  sheepfold,  to  Ruth  by  the  wayside,  adding  these 
humble  children  of  the  furrow  to  the  true  aristocracy  of  passionate 
souls.  In  this  respect,  Wordsworth's  work  resembles  most  that  of 
George  Sand,  in  those  of  her  novels  which  depict  country  life. 
With  a  penetrative  pathos,  which  puts  him  in  the  same  rank  with 
the  masters  of  the  sentiment  of  pity  in  literature,  with  Mcinhold 
and  Victor  Hugo,  he  collects  all  the  traces  of  vivid  excitement 


WORDSWORTH  lig 

which  were  to  be  found  in  that  pastoral  world  —  the  girl  who  rung 
her  father's  knell ;  the  unborn  infant  feeling  about  its  mother's  heart; 
the  instinctive  touches  of  children;  the  sorrows  of  the  wild  crea- 
tures, even  —  their  homesickness,  their  strange  yearnings ;  the 
tales  of  passionate  regret  that  hang  by  a  ruined  farm-building,  a 
heap  of  stones,  a  deserted  sheepfold;  that  gay,  false,  adventurous, 
outer  world,  which  breaks  in  from  time  to  time  to  bewilder  and  de- 
flower these  quiet  homes;  not  "passionate  sorrow"  only,  for  the 
overthrow  of  the  soul's  beauty,  but  the  loss  of,  or  carelessness  for 
personal  beauty  even,  in  those  whom  men  have  wronged  —  their 
pathetic  wanness;  the  sailor  "who,  in  his  heart,  was  half  a  shep- 
herd on  the  stormy  seas";  the  wild  woman  teaching  her  child  to 
pray  for  her  betrayer ;  incidents  like  the  making  of  the  shepherd's 
staff,  or  that  of  the  young  boy  laying  the  first  stone  of  the  sheep- 
fold  ;  —  all  the  pathetic  episodes  of  their  humble  existence,  their 
longing,  their  wonder  at  fortune,  their  poor  pathetic  pleasures, 
like  the  pleasures  of  children,  won  so  hardly  in  the  struggle  for  bare 
existence;  their  yearning  towards  each  other,  in  their  darkened 
houses,  or  at  their  early  toil.  A  sort  of  biblical  depth  and  solem- 
nity hangs  over  this  strange,  new,  passionate,  pastoral  world,  of 
which  he  first  raised  the  image,  and  the  reflection  of  which  some 
of  our  best  modern  fiction  has  caught  from  him. 

He  pondered  much  over  the  philosophy  of  his  poetry,  and  read- 
ing deeply  in  the  history  of  his  own  mind,  seems  at  times  to  have 
passed  the  borders  of  a  world  of  strange  speculations,  inconsistent 
enough,  had  he  cared  to  note  such  inconsistencies,  with  those  tra- 
ditional beliefs,  which  were  otherwise  the  object  of  his  devout  accept- 
ance. Thinking  of  the  high  value  he  set  upon  customariness, 
upon  all  that  is  habitual,  local,  rooted  in  the  ground,  in  matters  of 
religious  sentiment,  you  might  sometimes  regard  him  as  one  teth- 
ered down  to  a  world,  refined  and  peaceful  indeed,  but  with  no  broad 
outlook,  a  world  protected,  but  somewhat  narrowed,  by  the  influ- 
ence of  received  ideas.  But  he  is  at  times  also  something  very 
different  from  this,  and  something  much  bolder.  A  chance  ex- 
pression is  overheard  and  placed  in  a  new  connection,  the  sudden 
memory  of  a  thing  long  past  occurs  to  him,  a  distant  object  is  re- 
lieved for  a  while  by  a  random  gleam  of  light  —  accidents  turning 
up  for  a  moment  what  lies  below  the  surface  of  our  immediate 
experience  —  and  he  passes  from  the  humble  graves  and  lowly 
arches  of  "the  little  rock-like  pile"  of  a  Westmoreland  church, 


I20  WALTER   PATER 

on  bold  trains  of  speculative  thought,  and  comes,  from  point  to 
point,  into  strange  contact  with  thoughts  which  have  visited, 
from  time  to  time,  far  more  venturesome,  perhaps  errant,  spirits. 

He  had  pondered  deeply,  for  instance,  on  those  strange  reminis- 
cences and  forebodings,  which  seem  to  make  our  lives  stretch 
before  and  behind  us,  beyond  where  we  can  see  or  touch  anything, 
or  trace  the  lines  of  connection.  Following  the  soul,  backwards 
and  forwards,  on  these  endless  ways,  his  sense  of  man's  dim,  poten- 
tial powers  became  a  pledge  to  him,  indeed,  of  a  future  life,  but 
carried  him  back  also  to  that  mysterious  notion  of  an  earlier 
state  of  existence  —  the  fancy  of  the  Platonists  —  the  old  heresy 
of  Origen.  It  was  in  this  mood  that  he  conceived  those  oft- 
reiterated  regrets  for  a  half-ideal  childhood,  when  the  relics  of 
Paradise  still  clung  about  the  soul  —  a  childhood,  as  it  seemed,  full 
of  the  fruits  of  old  age,  lost  for  all,  in  a  degree,  in  the  passing  away 
of  the  youth  of  the  world,  lost  for  each  one,  over  again,  in  the 
passing  away  of  actual  youth.  It  is  this  ideal  childhood  which  he 
celebrates  in  his  famous  Ode  on  tlie  Recollections  oj  Childhood, 
and  some  other  poems  which  may  be  grouped  around  it,  such  as 
the  lines  on  Tintern  Abbey,  and  something  like  what  he  describes 
was  actually  truer  of  himself  than  he  seems  to  have  understood; 
for  his  own  most  delightful  poems  were  really  the  instinctive  pro- 
ductions of  earlier  life,  and  most  surely  for  him,  "the  first  diviner 
influence  of  this  world"  passed  away,  more  and  more  completely, 
in  his  contact  with  experience. 

Sometimes  as  he  dwelt  upon  those  moments  of  profound,  im- 
aginative power,  in  which  the  outward  object  appears  to  take  colour 
and  expression,  a  new  nature  almost,  from  the  prompting  of  the 
observant  mind,  the  actual  world  would,  as  it  were,  dissolve  and 
detach  itself,  flake  by  flake,  and  he  himself  seemed  to  be  the 
creator,  and  when  he  would  the  destroyer,  of  the  world  in  which  he 
lived  —  that  old  isolating  thought  of  many  a  brain-sick  mystic  of 
ancient  and  modern  times. 

At  other  times,  again,  in  those  periods  of  intense  susceptibility, 
in  which  he  appeared  to  himself  as  but  the  passive  recipient  of  ex- 
ternal influences,  he  was  attracted  by  the  thought  of  a  spirit  of  life 
in  outward  things,  a  single,  all-pervading  mind  in  them,  of  which 
man,  and  even  the  poet's  imaginative  energy,  are  but  moments 
—  that  old  dream  of  the  anima  mundi,  the  mother  of  all  things  and 
their  grave,  in  which  some  had  desired  to  lose  themselves,  and 
others  had  become  indift'erent  to  the  distinctions  of  good  and  evil. 


WORDSWORTH  121 

It  would  come,  sometimes,  like  the  sign  of  the  macrocosm  to  Faust 
in  his  cell:  the  network  of  man  and  nature  was  seen  to  be  per- 
vaded by  a  common,  universal  life:  a  new,  bold  thought  lifted 
him  above  the  furrow,  above  the  green  turf  of  the  Westmoreland 
churchyard,  to  a  world  altogether  different  in  its  vagueness  and 
vastness,  and  the  narrow  glen  was  full  of  the  brooding  power  of  one 
universal  spirit. 

And  so  he  has  something,  also,  for  those  who  fee;l  the  fascina- 
tion of  bold  speculative  ideas,  who  are  really  capable  of  rising  upon 
them  to  conditions  of  poetical  thought.  He  uses  them,  indeed, 
always  with  a  very  fine  apprehension  of  the  Umits  within  which 
alone  philosophical  imaginings  have  any  place  in  true  poetry; 
and  using  them  only  for  poetical  purposes,  is  not  too  careful  even 
to  make  them  consistent  with  each  other.  To  him,  theories  which 
for  other  men  bring  a  world  of  technical  diction,  brought  perfect 
form  and  expression,  as  in  those  two  lofty  books  of  the  Prelude, 
which  describe  the  decay  and  the  restoration  of  Imagination  and 
Taste.  Skirting  the  borders  of  this  world  of  bewildering  heights 
and  depths,  he  got  but  the  first  exciting  influence  of  it,  that  joyful 
enthusiasm  which  great  imaginative  theories  prompt,  when  the 
mind  first  comes  to  have  an  understanding  of  them ;  and  it  is  not 
under  the  influence  of  these  thoughts  that  his  poetry  becomes 
tedious  or  loses  its  blitheness.  He  keeps  them,  too,  always  within 
certain  ethical  bounds,  so  that  no  word  of  his  could  offend  the  sim- 
plest of  those  simple  souls  which  are  always  the  largest  portion 
of  mankind.  But  it  is,  nevertheless,  the  contact  of  these  thoughts, 
the  speculative  boldness  in  them,  which  constitutes,  at  least  for 
some  minds,  the  secret  attraction  of  much  of  his  best  poetry  — ■ 
the  sudden  passage  from  lowly  thoughts  and  places  to  the  majestic 
forms  of  philosophical  imagination,  the  play  of  these  forms  over  a 
world  so  different,  enlarging  so  strangely  the  bounds  of  its  humble 
churchyards,  and  breaking  such  a  wild  light  on  the  graves  of  chris- 
tened children. 

And  these  moods  always  brought  with  them  faultless  expression. 
In  regard  to  expression,  as  with  feeling  and  thought,  the  duality  of 
the  higher  and  lower  moods  was  absolute.  It  belonged  to  the 
higher,  the  imaginative  mood,  and  was  the  pledge  of  its  reality, 
to  bring  the  appropriate  language  with  it.  In  him,  when  the  really 
poetical  motive  worked  at  all,  it  united,  with  absolute  justice,  the 
word  and  the  idea;   each,  in  the  imaginative  flame,  becoming  in- 


122  WALTER  PATER 

separably  one  with  the  other,  by  that  fusion  of  matter  and  form, 
which  is  the  characteristic  of  the  highest  poetical  expression.  His 
words  are  themselves  thought  and  feeling;  not  eloquent,  or  musical 
words  merely,  but  that  sort  of  creative  language  which  carries 
the  reality  of  what  it  depicts,  directly,  to  the  consciousness. 

The  music  of  mfere  metre  performs  but  a  limited,  yet  a  very 
peculiar  and  subtly  ascertained  function,  in  Wordsworth's  poetry. 
With  him,  metre  is  but  an  additional  grace,  accessory  to  that 
deeper  music  of  words  and  sounds,  that  moving  power,  which  they 
exercise  in  the  nobler  prose  no  less  than  in  formal  poetry.  It  is 
a  sedative  to  that  excitement,  an  excitement  sometimes  almost 
painful,  under  which  the  language,  alike  of  poetry  and  prose,  at- 
tains a  rhythmical  power,  independent  of  metrical  combination, 
and  dependent  rather  on  some  subtle  adjustment  of  the  elementary 
sounds  of  words  themselves  to  the  image  or  feeling  they  convey. 
Yet  some  of  his  pieces,  pieces  prompted  by  a  sort  of  half-playful 
mysticism,  like  the  Dafjodils  and  The  Two  April  Mornings,  are 
distinguished  by  a  certain  quaint  gayety  of  metre,  and  rival  by  their 
perfect  execution,  in  this  respect,  similar  pieces  among  our  own 
Elizabethan,  or  contemporary  French  poetry.  And  those  who 
take  up  these  poems  after  an  interval  of  months,  or  years  perhaps, 
may  be  surprised  at  finding  how  well  old  favourites  wear,  how  their 
strange,  inventive  turns  of  diction  or  thought  still  send  through 
them  the  old  feeling  of  surprise.  Those  who  lived  about  Words- 
worth were  all  great  lovers  of  the  older  English  literature,  and  often- 
times there  came  out  in  him  a  noticeable  likeness  to  our  earlier 
poets.  He  quotes  unconsciously,  but  with  new  power  of  meaning, 
a  clause  from  one  of  Shakespeare's  sonnets;  and,  as  with  some 
other  men's  most  famous  work,  the  Ode  on  the  Reeollcrlions  of 
CliildJwod  had  its  anticipator.^  He  drew  something  too  from  the 
unconscious  mysticism  of  the  old  English  language  itself,  drawing 
out  the  inward  significance  of  its  racy  idiom,  and  the  not  wholly 
unconscious  poetry  of  the  language  used  by  the  simplest  people 
under  strong  excitement  —  language,  therefore,  at  its  origin. 

The  office  of  the  poet  is  not  that  of  the  moralist,  and  the  first  aim 
of  Wordsworth's  poetry  is  to  give  the  reader  a  peculiar  kind  of 
pleasure.  But  through  his  poetry,  and  through  this  pleasure  in 
it,  he  does  actually  convey  to  the  reader  an  extraordinary  wisdom 
in  the  things  of  practice.     One  lesson,  if  men  must  have  lessons, 

'  Henry  Vaughan,  in  The  Retreat. 


WORDSWORTH  1 23 

he  conveys  more  clearly  than  all,  the  supreme  importance  of  con- 
templation in  the  conduct  of  life. 

Contemplation  —  impassioned  contemplation  —  that  is  with 
Wordsworth  the  end-in-itself,  the  perfect  end.  We  see  the  ma- 
jority of  mankind  going  most  often  to  definite  ends,  lower  or 
higher  ends,  as  their  own  instincts  may  determine ;  but  the  end 
may  never  be  attained,  and  the  means  not  be  quite  the  right  means, 
great  ends  and  little  ones  alike  being,  for  the  most  part,  distant, 
and  the  ways  to  them,  in  this  dim  world,  somewhat  vague.  Mean- 
time, to  higher  or  lower  ends,  they  move  too  often  with  something 
of  a  sad  countenance,  with  hurried  and  ignoble  gait,  becoming, 
unconsciously,  something  like  thorns,  in  their  anxiety  to  bear 
grapes;  it  being  possible  for  people,  in  the  pursuit  of  even  great 
ends,  to  become  themselves  thin  and  impoverished  in  spirit  and 
temper,  thus  diminishing  the  sum  of  perfection  in  the  world,  at  its 
very  sources.  We  understand  this  when  it  is  a  question  of  mean, 
or  of  intensely  selfish  ends  —  of  Grandet,  or  Javert.  We  think 
it  bad  moraUty  to  say  that  the  end  justifies  the  means,  and  we  know 
how  false  to  all  higher  conceptions  of  the  religious  life  is  the  type 
of  one  who  is  ready  to  do  evil  that  good  may  come.  We  contrast 
with  such  dark,  mistaken  eagerness,  a  type  like  that  of  Saint  Cather- 
ine of  Siena,  who  made  the  means  to  her  ends  so  attractive,  that 
she  has  won  for  herself  an  undying  place  in  the  House  Beautiful, 
not  by  her  rectitude  of  soul  only,  but  by  its  "fairness "  —  by  those 
quite  different  qualities  which  commend  themselves  to  the  poet 
and  the  artist. 

Yet,  for  most  of  us,  the  conception  of  means  and  ends  covers 
the  whole  of  life,  and  is  the  exclusive  type  or  figure  under  which 
we  represent  our  lives  to  ourselves.  Such  a  figure,  reducing  all 
things  to  machinery,  though  it  has  on  its  side  the  authority  of  that 
old  Greek  moralist  who  has  fixed  for  succeeding  generations  the 
outline  of  the  theory  of  right  living,  is  too  like  a  mere  picture  or 
description  of  men's  lives  as  we  actually  find  them,  to  be  the  basis 
of  the  higher  ethics.  It  covers  the  meanness  of  men's  daily  lives, 
and  much  of  the  dexterity  and  the  vigour  with  which  they  pursue 
what  may  seem  to  them  the  good  of  themselves  or  of  others;  but 
not  the  intangible  perfection  of  those  whose  ideal  is  rather  in  bemg 
than  in  doing  —  not  those  manners  which  are,  in  the  deepest  as  in 
the  simplest  sense,  morals,  and  without  which  one  cannot  so 
much  as  offer  a  cup  of  water  to  a  poor  man  without  offence  —  not 
the  part  of  "antique  Rachel,"  sitting  in  the  company  of  Beatrice; 


124  WALTER  PATER 

and  even  the  moralist  might  well  endeavour  rather  to  withdraw 
men  from  the  too  exclusive  consideration  of  means  and  ends,  in 
hfe. 

Against  this  predominance  of  machinery  in  our  existence,  Words- 
worth's poetry,  Uke  all  great  art  and  poetry,  is  a  continual  protest. 
Justify  rather  the  end  by  the  means,  it  seems  to  say:  whatever 
may  become  of  the  fruit,  make  sure  of  the  flowers  and  the 
leaves.  It  was  justly  said,  therefore,  by  one  who  had  meditated 
very  profoundly  on  the  true  relation  of  means  to  ends  in  life,  and 
on  the  distinction  between  what  is  desirable  in  itself  and  what  is 
desirable  only  as  machinery,  that  when  the  battle  which  he  and  his 
friends  were  waging  had  been  won,  the  world  would  need  more  than 
ever  those  qualities  which  Wordsworth  was  keeping  alive  and 
nourishing.^ 

That  the  end  of  life  is  not  action  but  contemplation  —  being 
as  distinct  from  doing  —  a  certain  disposition  of  the  mind :  is, 
in  some  shape  or  other,  the  principle  of  all  the  higher  morality. 
In  poetry,  in  art,  if  you  enter  into  their  true  spirit  at  all,  you  touch 
this  principle,  in  a  measure:  these,  by  their  very  sterility,  are  a 
type  of  beholding  for  the  mere  joy  of  beholding.  To  treat  life 
in  the  spirit  of  art,  is  to  make  life  a  thing  in  which  means  and  ends 
are  identified:  to  encourage  such  treatment,  the  true  moral  sig- 
nificance of  art  and  poetry.  Wordsworth,  and  other  poets  who 
have  been  like  him  in  ancient  or  more  recent  times,  are  the  masters, 
the  experts,  in  this  art  of  impassioned  contemplation.  Their 
work  is,  not  to  teach  lessons,  or  enforce  rules,  or  even  to  stimulate 
us  to  noble  ends;  but  to  withdraw  the  thoughts  for  a  little  while 
from  the  mere  machinery  of  life,  to  fix  them,  with  appropriate  emo- 
tions, on  the  spectacle  of  those  great  facts  in  man's  existence  which 
no  machinery  affects,  "on  the  great  and  universal  passions  of  men, 
the  most  general  and  interesting  of  their  occupations,  and  the 
entire  world  of  nature,"  —  on  "the  operations  of  the  elements 
and  the  appearances  of  the  visible  universe,  on  storm  and  sun- 
shine, on  the  revolutions  of  the  seasons,  on  cold  and  heat,  on  loss 
of  friends  and  kindred,  on  injuries  and  resentments,  on  gratitude 
and  hope,  on  fear  and  sorrow."  To  witness  this  spectacle  with 
appropriate  emotions  is  the  aim  of  all  culture ;  and  of  these  emo- 
tions poetry  like  Wordsworth's  is  a  great  nourisher  and  stimulant. 
He  sees  nature  full  of  sentiment  and  excitement ;  he  sees  men  and 

*  See  an  interestiriR  paper  by  Mr.  John  Morley,  on  "The  Death  of  Mr.  Mill," 
Fortnightly  Review,  June,  1873. 


WORDSWORTH  12  5 

women  as  parts  of  nature,  passionate,  excited,  in  strange  grouping 
and  connection  with  the  grandeur  and  beauty  of  the  natural  world : 
—  images,  in  his  own  words,  "of  man  suffering,  amid  awful 
forms  and  powers." 

Such  is  the  figure  of  the  more  powerful  and  original  poet,  hidden 
away,  in  part,  under  those  weaker  elements  in  Wordsworth's 
poetry,  which  for  some  minds  determine  their  entire  character; 
a  poet  somewhat  bolder  and  more  passionate  than  might  at  first 
sight  be  supposed,  but  not  too  bold  for  true  poetical  taste;  an  un- 
impassioned  writer,  you  might  sometimes  fancy,  yet  thinking  the 
chief  aim,  in  life  and  art  alike,  to  be  a  certain  deep  emotion; 
seeking  most  often  the  great  elementary  passions  in  lowly  places; 
having  at  least  this  condition  of  all  impassioned  work,  that  he  aims 
always  at  an  absolute  sincerity  of  feeling  and  diction,  so  that  he  is 
the  true  forerunner  of  the  deepest  and  most  passionate  poetry  of 
our  own  day;  yet  going  back  also,  with  something  of  a  protest 
against  the  conventional  fervour  of  much  of  the  poetry  popular  in 
his  own  time,  to  those  older  English  poets,  whose  unconscious  like- 
ness often  comes  out  in  him. 


VII 

JOHN  MACKINNON  ROBERTSON 
(1856) 

POE 

[First  published  in  Our  Corner  in  1885.  Reprinted  in  New  Essays  towards 
a  Critical  Method,  John  Lane,  The  Bodley  Head,  London  and  New  York, 
i8q7.  Here  printed  with  the  [)ermission  and  through  the  courtesy  of  the 
John  Lane  Company.  The  footnotes,  for  the  most  part,  belong  to  the  later 
edition.]  • 


Since  all  literary  cases  must  be  periodically  rejudged,  each  gen- 
eration's opinions  on  any  phase  of  the  past  being  part  of  its  special 
relation  to  things,  it  is  strictly  as  needless  to  justify  the  plea  for  a 
fresh  trial  in  any  one  case  as  it  is  vain  to  deny  it.  Demurrers  have 
been  too  often  made  to  leave  any  difficulty  about  their  rebuttal. 
Evolution  is  become  a  name  potent  to  put  down  the  most  obstreper- 
ous conservative  in  criticism.  It  is  involved  in  that  law,  however, 
that  we  shall  all  of  us  continue  to  have  our  particular  leanings, 
and  that  some  problems  will  peculiarly  appeal  to  the  general  mind 
at  given  junctures.  And  while  it  is  part  of  the  here-ensuing  argu- 
ment that  less  than  due  hearing  as  well  as  less  than  justice  has  been 
granted  in  the  case  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  it  is  probably  true  that  to- 
day even  more  than  ever  men  feel  the  fascination  of  the  general 
problem  falling  under  his  name. 

Just  because  of  its  fascination,  indeed,  the  Poe  problem  has  been 
less  methodically  handled  than  most.  Its  aspects  are  so  bizarre 
that  critics  have  been  more  concerned  to  declare  as  much  than  to 
sum  them  up  with  scientific  exactitude.  First  the  ear  of  the  world 
was  won  with  a  biography  uny)aralleled  in  literature  for  its  calcu- 
lated calumny,  a  slander  so  comprehensive  and  so  circumstantial 

126 


POE  127 

that  to  this  day  perhaps  most  people  who  have  heard  of  Poe  regard 
him  as  what  he  himself  called  "that  monstriim  hurrenditm,^  an 
unprincipled  man  of  genius,"  with  almost  no  moral  virtue  and  lack- 
ing almost  no  vice.  It  was  an  ex-clergyman,  Griswold,  who 
launched  the  legend;  and  another  clergyman,  Gilfillan,  improved 
on  it  to  the  extent  of  suggesting  that  the  poet  broke  his  wife's 
heart  so  as  to  be  able  to  write  a  poem  about  her.  The  average 
mind  being,  however,  a  little  less  ready  than  the  clerical  to  believe 
and  utter  evil,  there  at  length  grew  up  a  body  of  vindication  which 
for  instructed  readers  has  displaced  the  sinister  myth  of  the  early 
records.  Vindication,  as  it  happened,  began  immediately  on  the 
publication  of  Griswold's  memoir;  only,  the  slander  had  the  pres- 
tige of  book  form,  and  of  the  copyright  edition  of  Poe's  works, 
while  the  defence  was  at  first  confined  to  newspapers;  hence  an 
immense  start  for  the  former :  but  at  length  generous  zeal  triumphed 
to  the  extent  of  creating  an  almost  stainless  effigy  of  the  poet  — 
stainless  save  for  the  constitutional  flaw  which  was  confessed  only 
to  claim  for  it  a  human  pity,  and  the  faults  of  tone  and  temper 
which  came  of  nervous  malady  and  undue  toil.  Then  there  came 
a  reaction,  the  facts  were  more  closely  studied  and  more  unsym- 
pathetically  pronounced  upon;  the  unsleeping  ill-will  towards  the 
poet's  name  in  his  own  country  still  had  the  literary  field  and  fa- 
vour, and  the  last  and  most  ambitious  edition  of  his  works  is  super- 
vised by  a  none  too  friendly  critic.^  Good  and  temperate  criticism 
has  been  forthcoming  between  whiles ;  but  there  is  still  room,  one 
fancies,  for  an  impartial  re-statement  of  the  facts. 

"It  w^ould  seem,"  writes  Mrs.  Sarah  Helen  Whitman,  the  Ameri- 
can poetess,  sometime  ihe  fiancee  of  Poe,  and  one  of  the  vindicators 
of  his  memory,  "it  would  seem  that  the  true  point  of  view  from 
which  his  genius  should  be  regarded  has  yet  to  be  sought."  ^  The 
full  force  of  that  observation,  perhaps,  cannot  be  felt  unless  it  be 
read  in  context  with  some  of  the  sentences  in  which  Mrs.  Whit- 
man sets  forth  her  own  point  of  view :  — 

"Wanting  in  that  supreme  central  force  or  faculty  of  the  mind,  whose  func- 
tion is  a  God-conscious  and  God-adoring  faith,  Edgar  Poe  sought  earnestly 
and  conscientiously  for  such  solution  of  the  great  problems  of  thought  as 
were  alone  attainable  to  an  intellect  hurled  from  its  balance  by  the  abnormal 
preponderance  of  the  analytical  and  imaginative  faculties." 

'  [Horrible  monster.] 

-  This  holds  true,  unfortunately,  of  the  still  later  complete  edition,  by  Messrs. 
Stedman  and  Woodberry. 

^  Edgar  Poe  and  his  Critics,  p.  59. 


128  JOHN   MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 

"These  far-wandering  comets,  not  less  than  'the  regular,  calm  stars,' 
obey  a  law  and  follow  a  pathway  that  has  been  marked  out  for  them  by  in- 
finite Wisdom  and  essential  Love."  ^ 

The  theism  exemplified  in  these  passages  appears  to  be  the 
reigning  religion  in  the  United  States,  and  is  doubtless  common 
enough  everywhere  else;  and  it  certainly  seems  sufficiently  clear 
that  for  people  whose  minds  oscillate  between  conceptions  of  Poe's 
intellect  as  hurled  from  its  balance  and  as  wisely  guided  by  a 
loving  God  who  deprived  it  of  the  faculty  of  God-consciousness  — 
for  such  people  the  "true  point  of  view  from  which  his  genius  should 
be  regarded  "  must  indeed  be  far  to  seek.  That  point  of  view  can 
hardly  be  one  from  which  you  explain  the  infinite  while  perplexed 
by  the  finite;  it  is  to  be  attained  not  a  priori  but  a  posteriori;  that 
is  to  say,  Poe's  life  and  his  works  have  to  be  studied  with  an  eye, 
not  to  discovering  a  scheme  of  infinite  wisdom,  or  even  to  finding  a 
"point  of  view,"  but  simply  to  the  noting  of  the  facts  and  the  ar- 
ranging of  them.  The  true  point  of  view  is  surely  that  from  which 
you  see  things. 

Much,  of  course,  depends  on  methods  of  observation.  At  the 
outset,  we  are  confronted  by  the  facts  that  Poe's  father  married 
imprudently  at  eighteen,  and  that  the  lady  was  an  actress.  That  is 
either  a  mere  romantic  detail  or  a  very  important  fact,  according 
as  Poe  is  regarded  as  an  organism  or  as  an  immortal  soul.  Here 
indeed,  the  point  of  view  means  the  seeing  or  the  not  seeing  of 
certain  facts;  but  as  most  people  to-day  have  some  little  faith  in 
the  operation  of  heredity,  it  may  be  assumed  that  the  significance 
of  Poe's  parentage  is  admitted  when  it  is  mentioned.  Recent  inves- 
tigators have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  David  Poe  was  not  merely 
romantic  and  reckless,  but  given  to  the  hard  drinking  which  was  so 
common  in  the  Southern  States  in  his  time;  and  thus,  coming  of 
a  father  of  intemperate  habits  and  headlong  impulses,  and  of  a 
mother  whose  very  profession  meant  excitement  and  shaken  nerves, 
Poe  had  before  him  tremendous  probabilities  of  an  erratic  career. 
As  fate  would  have  it,  the  man  who  adopted  the  little  Edgar  on 
the  death  of  the  young  parents  (they  both  died  of  consumption) 
did  everything  to  aggravate  and  nothing  to  counteract  the  tempera- 
mental flaws  of  the  life  he  took  in  charge,  ^^'e  know  that  Edgar's 
brother,  William  Henry,  who  may  or  may  not  have  been  equally 
ill-managed  by  the  friend  who  adopted  him,  turned  out  a  clever 
scapegrace  and  died  young;   but  certain  it  is  that  Mr.  Allan  was 

'  Edgar  Poe  and  his  Critics,  pp.  33-34,  60. 


POE  129 

no  wise  guardian  to  Edgar.  The  habits  of  the  house  were  Southern 
and  convivial;  the  clever  child  was  petted,  flattered,  and  spoiled; 
and  it  seems  that  Poe  might  have  been  made  a  toper  by  his  sur- 
roundings even  if  he  had  no  bias  that  way.  Again,  Mr.  Allan 
was  rich,  and  Poe  had  no  prospective  necessities  of  labour,  no 
sense  of  obligation  to  be  methodical;  which  makes  it  the  more 
natural  that  his  later  life  should  be  a  failure  financially,  and  the 
more  remarkable  that  he  should  exhibit  unusual  powers  of  close 
and  orderly  thought.  Finally,  the  boy's  shifting  life;  his  four 
years'  schooling  in  England  (where  in  the  opinion  of  his  teacher, 
his  guardian  did  him  serious  harm  by  giving  him  too  much  pocket- 
money),  and  later  at  Richmond;  his  brief  military  cadetship  at 
West  Point,  his  headlong  trip  to  Europe,  and  his  year's  stay  there, 
of  which  nothing  seems  to  be  now  known,  and  his  studentship  at 
the  Virginia  University  —  all  tended  to  deprive  him  of  the  benefits 
of  habit,  which  might  conceivably  have  been  some  safeguard  against 
his  hereditary  instability ;  and  at  the  same  time  his  training  tended 
to  develop,  though  inadequately  and  at  random,  his  purely  intel- 
lectual powers,  while  supplying  him  with  no  moral  guidance  worth 
mentioning.  Such  a  character  required  the  very  wisest  manage- 
ment :  it  had  either  bad  management  or  none.  It  was  therefore 
only  too  natural  that  the  youth  should  be  self-willed  and  insubor- 
dinate at  West  Point,  and  much  given  to  gambling  at  college. 

The  other  side  of  the  picture,  however,  must  be  kept  in  view. 
While  apparently  loosely  related  to  life  in  respect  of  the  normal 
affections  (he  seems  to  have  had  little  communication  with  his 
brother,  no  very  strong  attachment  to  his  sister,  and  no  attachment 
to  Mr.  Allan),  he  was  very  far  from  being  the  unfeeling  and  love- 
less creature  he  was  so  long  believed  to  be.  He  seems  to  have 
described  himself  accurately  when  he  wrote  of  his  uncommon  and 
invariable  tenderness  to  animals ;  and  the  intensity  of  his  affections 
where  they  were  really  called  out  is  revealed  by  the  story  of  his 
passionate  grief  on  the  death  of  the  lady,  the  mother  of  one  of  his 
comrades,  who  befriended  him  in  schoolboyhood.  Abnormal  in 
his  grief  as  in  the  play  of  all  his  faculties,  and  blindly  bent  even  then 
on  piercing  the  mystery  of  the  sepulchre,  the  boy  passed  long  night 
vigils  on  her  grave,  clinging,  beyond  death,  to  the  first  being  he  had 
learned  utterly  to  love.  And  an  important  statement  is  made  as  to 
the  manner  of  his  marriage  by  a  lady  who  knew  him  and  his  con- 
nections well.^     The  majority  of  respectable  readers,  probably, 

'  Art.  "Last  Days  of  E.  A.  Poe,"  in  Scrihner's  Magazine,  March,  1878. 
K 


130  JOHN  MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 

have  regarded  Poe's  marriage  to  his  beautiful  and  penniless  young 
cousin  as  one  of  his  acts  of  culpable  recklessness;  but  according  to 
the  account  in  question,  it  was  rather  a  deed  of  generous  devotion. 
He  had  acted  as  a  boy  tutor  to  Virginia  Clemm  in  her  early  child- 
hood, and  when,  after  his  final  rupture  with  Mr.  Allan,  he  went  to 
reside  with  his  aunt,^  the  young  girl  acquired  a  worship  for  him. 
According  to  this  story  it  was  on  Mrs.  Clemm 's  impressing  on  him, 
when  he  contemplated  leaving  her  house  after  being  an  inmate  for 
two  years,  the  absolute  absorption  of  the  girl  in  his  existence,  that 
he  proposed  the  marriage.  She  was  hardly  fourteen,  poor  child, 
but  she  was  of  the  precocious  Southern  blood,  and  her  youth  seems 
to  have  made  her  mother  only  the  more  fearful  of  the  effect  of 
separation  from  her  adored  cousin.  Poe's  marriage  was  on  this 
view  an  act  not  of  free  choice  but  of  prompt  generosity.  Whatever 
the  truth  may  be,  he  was  a  very  good  husband.  Devoted  as  she 
was  up  to  her  death,  Virginia  never  gave  him  the  full  intellectual 
companionship  he  would  have  sought  in  a  wife;  but  there  is  now 
no  pretence  that  he  ever  showed  her  the  shadow  of  unkindness, 
and  it  is  admitted  that  in  her  last  days  he  was  tenderness  itself. 
All  which  is  a  fair  certificate  of  good  domestic  disposition,  as  men 
and  poets  go. 

What  then  was  there  in  Poe's  life  as  a  whole  to  justify  detraction  ? 
When  the  testimony  is  fully  sifted  the  discreditable  charges  are 
found  to  be :  first  and  chiefly,  that  he  repeatedly  gave  way  to  his 
hereditary  vice  of  alcoholism;  secondly,  that  he  committed  one 
lapse  from  literary  integrity;  thirdly,  that  he  was  often  splenetic 
and  sometimes  unjust  as  a  critic ;  fourthly,  that  he  showed  ingrati- 
tude and  enmity  to  some  who  befriended  him.  Setting  aside  his 
youthful  passionateness  and  prodigality,  that  is  now  the  whole 
serious  moral  indictment  against  him.  The  insinuations  and  asser- 
tions of  Griswold,  to  the  effect  that  he  committed  more  than  one 
gross  outrage,  are  found  to  be  either  proven  false  or  wholly  without 
proof;  and  many  of  the  biographer's  aspersions  on  his  disposition 
have  been  indignantly  repudiated  by  those  who  knew  him  well  — 
as  Mr.  G.  R.  Graham  and  Mr.  N.  P.  Willis,  both  of  whom  em- 
ployed him.  As  for  the  alleged  ingratitude  to  unnamed  friends, 
it  seems  only  fair  to  ask  whether  any  such  faults,  if  real,  may  not 

'  Mr.  Ingram  says  {Life,  I,  106-7)  that  Mrs.  Clemm  "never  did  know"  where 
Poe  went  after  the  rupture  (1831);  and  that  "extant  correspondence  proves" 
that  Poe  did  not  hve  with  her  in  1831-2,  "and,  apparently,  that  he  never  lived  with 
her  until  after  his  marriage." 


FOE  131 

be  attributed  to  the  havoc  ultimately  wrought  in  Poe's  delicately 
balanced  temperament  by  fits  of  drinking.'  Mr.  R.  H.  Stoddard  ^ 
has  given  an  account  of  some  very  singular  ill-treatment  he  re- 
ceived from  Poe  while  the  latter  edited  the  Broadway  Journal  — 
treatment  which  at  once  suggests  some  degree  of  cerebral  derange- 
ment on  Poe's  part;  and  a  story  told  of  his  resenting  a  home- 
thrust  of  criticism  by  a  torrent  of  curses,  goes  to  create  the  same 
impression.  This  was  in  his  latter  years,  at  a  time  when  a  thimble- 
ful of  sherry  could  excite  him  almost  to  frenzy,  and  when,  accord- 
ing to  one  hostile  writer,  he  had  developed  incurable  cerebral  dis- 
ease. Setting  aside  the  question  of  his  fairness  as  a  critic,  which 
will  be  discussed  further  on,  there  remains  to  be  considered  his  one 
alleged  deflection  from  literary  honesty.  He  did  publish  under  his 
own  name  a  manual  of  Conchology  which  apparently  incorporated, 
without  acknowledgment,  passages  from  a  work  by  Captain  Brown 
published  in  Glasgow;  and  it  is  alleged  by  Griswold,  and  imphed 
by  Mr.  Stoddard,  that  the  American  book  is  substantially  based  on 
Brown's.  But  there  is  really  no  proof  of  anything  like  important 
plagiarism,  and  the  slightness  of  the  evidence  is  very  suggestive 
of  a  weak  case.  Mr.  Stoddard,  who  exhibits  a  distinct  and  not 
altogether  unnatural  bias  against  his  subject,  prints  parallel  pas- 
sages which  do  seemingly  amount  to  "conveyance " ;  but  he  unjus- 
tifiably omits  to  answer  the  statement  on  the  other  side,  that  the 
Manual  of  Conchology  was  compiled  under  the  supervision  of  Pro- 
fessor Wyatt;  that  Poe  contributed  largely  to  it;  that  the  pub- 
lishers accordingly  wished  to  use  his  popular  name  on  the  title-page; 
and  that,  finally,  the  book,  though  corresponding  in  part  to  Brown's 
because  avowedly  based,  like  that,  on  the  system  of  Lamarck, 
is  essentially  an  independent  compilation.  Such  is  the  statement 
of  Professor  Wyatt,  and  the  matter  ought  to  be  easily  settled.^ 
What  Mr.  Stoddard  does  is  to  convey  the  impression  that  Poe 
copied  wholesale,  though  only  a  few  appropriations  are  cited. 
Now,  whereas  naked  appropriation  of  another  man's  ideas  in  his 
own  wording,  in  a  work  of  ostensibly  original  reasoning  or  imagina- 
tion, must  be  pronounced  a  serious  act  of  literary  dishonesty,  the 

'  In  the  memoir  prefixed  to  the  last  edition  of  Poe's  works,  it  is  stated  that  he 
resorted  at  times  to  opium  as  well  as  to  alcohol;  and  this  seems  likely  enough.  In 
that  case  there  would  be  all  the  more  risk  of  bad  effects  on  character. 

2  In  his  memoir  in  Widdleton's  ed.  of  Poe,  1880. 

^  See,  on  this  and  all  other  matters  concerning  Poe,  the  Life  by  John  H.  Ingram, 
a  work  of  painstaking  vindication  which  earns  the  gratitude  of  every  one  interested 
in  Poe.     The  American  Life,  by  W.  Gill,  is  mainly  compiled  from  it. 


132 


JOHN  MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 


incorporation  of  some  one  else's  paragraphs  or  sentences  is  so  com- 
mon a  practice  among  scientific  and  other  compilers,  that  it  may 
reasonably  be  classed  as  a  conventionally  innocent  proceeding, 
not  even  to  be  likened  to  those  innumerable  acts  of  lax  morality 
in  commerce  for  which  it  is  almost  idle  to  denounce  any  offender 
singly.  In  any  case,  Poe  never  pretended  to  be  doing  anything 
more  than  a  compilation,  and  he  had  a  colleague  in  the  work.  For 
the  rest,  there  is  ample  evidence  as  to  his  scrupulous  honesty 
and  fidelity  in  his  relations  with  his  literary  employers;  and  it  is 
not  recorded  that  he  ever  inflicted  loss  on  any  man,  any  more  than 
unkindness  on  those  about  him.  We  sum  up,  then,  that  Poe's 
mental  and  moral  balance,  delicate  by  inheritance,  was  injured  by 
the  drinking  habits  into  which  he  repeatedly  relapsed ;  but  that  his 
constitution  was  such  that  what  was  to  others  extremely  moderate 
indulgence  could  be  for  him  disastrous  excess. 

Now,  it  might  be  argued  with  almost  irresistible  force  that  such 
a  case  as  this  is  one  for  pity  and  not  for  blame  —  that  a  man  of 
Poe's  heredity  and  obvious  predisposition  to  brain  disease  is  to  be 
looked  on  in  the  same  spirit  as  is  one  who  suffers  from  downright 
hereditary  insanity.  But,  seeing  it  may  be  replied  that  all  vices 
are  similarly  the  result  of  hereditary  and  brain  conditions,  and  that 
we  should  either  blame  all  offenders  to  whom  we  allow  freedom  of 
action,  or  none,  I  am  inclined  to  rest  the  defence  of  Poe  on  a  some- 
what different  basis ;  and  to  substitute  for  a  deprecatory  account 
of  his  moral  disadvantages  the  assertion  that  morally  he  compares 
favourably  with  the  majority  of  his  fellow-creatures.  Whether 
that  is  either  a  vain  paradox  or  a  piece  of  cynicism  let  the  reader 
judge. 

It  is,  one  sees,  the  habit  of  most  people,  in  judging  of  any  char- 
acter in  favour  of  which  they  are  not  prejudiced,  to  try  it  by  the 
standard  of  an  imaginary  personage  who  is  without  any  serious 
fault.  The  strength  of  this  disposition  can  be  seen  at  any  per- 
formance of  a  melodrama  in  a  theatre,  the  great  body  of  the  au- 
dience being  obviously  in  strong  sympathy  with  virtues  of  which 
there  is  reason  to  doubt  their  own  general  possession ;  and  strongly 
hostile  even  to  vices  which  they  may  fairly  be  presumed  in  many 
cases  to  share.  In  the  phrase  of  Montesquieu,  "mankind,  although 
reprobates  in  detail,  are  always  moralists  in  gross."  As  for  the 
general  disposition  to  condemn  the  vices  we  are  not  inclined  to, 
that  may  be  dismissed  as  a  commonplace.  And  yet  it  is  one  of  the 
rarest  things  to  find  these  facts  recognized  in  conduct.     A  rational 


POE  133 

moral  code  is  hardly  ever  to  be  met  with.  Intemperance  —  to 
bring  the  question  to  the  concrete  —  may  be  reduced  in  common 
with  most  other  vices  to  an  admitted  lack  of  self-control ;  but  it  is 
clearly  blamed  for  some  other  reason  than  that  it  evidences  such 
a  defect.  If  a  man  or  woman  falls  hopelessly  in  love,  however 
abject  be  the  loss  of  self-command,  the  average  outsider  never 
thinks  of  calling  the  enamoured  one  vicious  merely  on  account  of 
the  extremity  of  the  passion.  That,  on  the  contrary,  is  regarded 
by  many  people  as  rather  a  fine  thing.  If,  again,  a  man  is  either 
extremely  selfish  or  extremely  prodigal,  while  he  may  be  censured 
for  his  fault,  he  is  still  held  to  be  less  blamable  than  the  mere  in- 
temperate drinker.  Sometimes  the  censure  passed  on  the  latter  is 
justified  on  the  score  that  his  vice  impoverishes  others ;  but  this  is 
not  always  so ;  and  in  any  case  the  selfish  or  ill-natured  man  and  the 
spendthrift  may  do  equal  injury  to  the  happiness  of  others.  The 
truth  is  that  the  revulsion  against  the  drunkard's  vice  arises  from  a 
keen  sense  of  the  physical  degradation  it  works  in  its  subject ;  and 
how  strong  and  how  instinctive  this  is  can  be  told  by  many  men 
who  have  contemplated  in  helpless  fury  the  excesses  of  relatives 
or  dear  friends.  In  these  cases  severe  blame  may  be  justified  by 
the  feeling  that  the  keenest  reprobation  is  necessary  to  sting  the 
drunkard  into  moral  reaction;  but  it  would  be  difficult  to  show 
that  when  a  man  is  dead  it  is  equitable  or  reasonable  to  apply  the 
same  degree  of  blame  to  him  in  reckoning  his  relation  to  his  fellows. 
All  criticism  of  dead  celebrities  should  be  regulated  by  two  con- 
siderations: first,  the  risk  or  absence  of  risk  that  omission  to  cen- 
sure for  certain  faults  may  encourage  the  living  to  repeat  them; 
second,  the  need  or  otherwise  for  resisting  any  tendency  to  blame 
certain  faults  unduly.  I  confess  I  can  see  no  other  safe  or  rational 
principle  on  which  to  apply,  in  moral  criticism  of  the  dead,  the 
general  law  that  men's  actions  are  the  outcome  of  their  antecedents 
and  environment.  If  so  much  be  conceded,  it  must  be  allowed 
that  there  is  no  more  need  to-day  to  denounce  Poe  for  his  unhappy 
vice  than  to  asperse  Charles  Lamb  —  which  Carlyle,  however, 
has  done  with  the  self-righteousness  of  the  chief  of  Pharisees.  No- 
body is  likely  to  be  encouraged  in  tippling  by  the  fact  that  we  speak 
with  tender  pity  of  Lamb's  failing.     The  query  — 

Who  wouldn't  take  to  drink  if  drink'U 
Make  a  man  like  Rip  Van  Winkle  ? 

is  not  serious. 


134  JOHN    MACKINNON    ROBERTSON 

No  one  in  these  days,  indeed,  does  think  it  necessary  to  pass 
damnatory  sentence  on  Lamb ;  '  and  the  difference  between  the 
ordinary  judgments  on  Lamb  and  Poe  is  a  striking  sample  of  the 
capriciousness  of  average  morahty.  Lamb's  weakness  for  gin  is 
regarded  as  morally  on  a  level  with  his  poor  sister's  chronic  homi- 
cidal mania;  and  of  course,  strictly  speaking,  his  misfortune  was 
as  much  a  matter  of  cerebral  constitution  as  hers.  But  surely  if 
Mary  Lamb  is  to  be  spoken  of  with  pure  pity  for  that  during  a  fit 
of  madness  she  caused  the  death  of  her  beloved  mother,  and  cer- 
tainly if  Charles  is  to  be  similarly  pitied,  we  are  committed  to  speak- 
ing gently  of  such  a  case  as  Poe's.  Yet  people  whose  feeling  for 
Lamb  is  entirely  affectionate  speak  of  Poe  with  austere  disapproval ; 
and  I  cannot  but  think  that  the  explanation  of  this  and  much  other 
asperity  towards  Poe's  memory  is  the  singular  quality  of  his  literary 
work,  especially  of  his  tales.  It  has  been  remarked  a  hundred 
times  that  these  are  unique  in  literature  in  their  almost  complete 
destitution  in  the  moral  element,  commonly  so-called.  They  are 
one  and  all  studies  either  of  peculiar  incident,  intellectual  processes, 
or  strange  idiosyncrasy;  and  the  ordinary  reader,  accustomed  in 
fiction  to  a  congenial  atmosphere  of  moral  feeling,  and  to  judicial 
contrasts  of  character  such  as  he  sees  and  makes  in  actual  life, 
becomes  chilled  and  daunted  in  the  eerie  regions  to  which  Poe  car- 
ries him.  The  common  result  seems  to  be  the  conclusion  that  the 
story-teller  was  lacking  in  moral  feeling;  and  though  every  one 
does  not  give  effect  to  his  conclusion  as  the  Rev.  Mr.  Gilfillan  did, 
such  a  conviction  is  of  course  not  compatible  with  sympathy.  How 
crudely  and  cruelly  people  can  act  on  such  semi-instinctive  and 
unreasoned  judgments  is  shown  in  the  correspondence  between 
Mrs.  Whitman  and  Poe  during  the  period  of  their  engagement. 
"You  do  not  love  me,"  writes  Poe  passionately,  "or  you  would 
have  felt  too  thorough  a  sympathy  with  the  sensitiveness  of  my 
nature  to  have  so  wounded  me  as  you  have  done  with  this  terrible 
passage  of  your  letter  — ■ '  How  often  I  have  heard  it  said  of  you.  He 
has  great  intellectual  power,  but  no  principle  —  no  moral  sense.'" 
One  is  disposed  to  echo  the  first  clause;  but  the  blow  which  Poe 
feels  so  acutely  is  only  one  of  those  moral  stupidities  of  which 
naturally  tender-hearted  women  are  capable  precisely  because 
their  moral  and  afifectional  sensibilities  at  times  overbalance  their 

'  Mr.  Birrcll,  in  his  essay  on  Charles  Lamb  (Obiter  Dicta,  2d  series,  p.  22q), 
generously  exclaims  against  some  who  do  bestow  on  Lamb  an  odious  pity.  Save 
in  the  case  of  Carlyle,  I  had  not  before  seen  any  trace  of  this. 


FOE  135 

common  sense.  Nothing  could  be  more  witlessly  and  inexcusably 
cruel,  and  at  the  same  time  nothing  could  be  more  absurd ;  for  if 
Poe  really  were  without  principle  any  protests  of  his  to  the  contrary 
could  be  worth  nothing;  and  if  the  accusation  were  false  he  had 
been  ruthlessly  insulted  to  no  purpose;  but  the  cruelty  was  prob- 
ably unconscious,  or  nearly  so.  Poor  Mrs.  Whitman  wrote,  as 
lovers  will,  to  extract  an  assurance  which  could  have  no  value  in 
the  eye  of  reason,  but  which  emotion  craved;  for  the  moment 
half  believing  what  she  said,  but  wishing  to  be  disabused  of  her 
suspicion  by  a  passionate  denial.  That  she  obtained.  The  most 
fortunate  thing  for  a  man  so  impeached  would  be  the  pos- 
session of  a  strong  sense  of  humour,  though  that  might  involve 
a  coolness  of  head  which  would  jeopardize  the  amour.  But 
poor  Poe,  wounded  as  he  was,  took  God  to  witness  that  "With 
the  exception  of  some  follies  and  excesses,  which  I  bitterly  la- 
ment, but  to  which  I  have  been  driven  by  intolerable  sorrow,  and 
which  are  hourly  committed  by  others  without  attracting  any  no- 
tice whatever,  I  can  call  to  mind  no  act  of  my  life  which  would 
bring  a  blush  to  my  cheek  —  or  to  yours."  And  after  alluding 
to  the  malignant  attacks  that  had  been  made  on  him,  for  one  of 
which  he  brought  a  successful  libel  action,  and  the  enmity  he  had 
set  up  by  his  uncompromising  criticisms,  he  cries :  "And  you  know 
all  this  —  you  ask  ivhy  I  have  enemies.  .  .  .  Forgive  me  if  there 
be  bitterness  in  my  tone."  On  which  Mr.  Ingram  warmly  com- 
ments that  the  man  who  wrote  so  must  have  been  sincere.  It  is 
hardly  necessary  to  urge  it.  Mrs.  Whitman  did  but  echo  the  idle 
verdict  of  conventional  minds  on  an  abnormal  nature.  With 
fuller  knowledge  she  wrote  after  his  death  that,  "so  far  from  being 
selfish  or  heartless,  his  devotional  fidelity  to  the  memory  of  those 
he  loved  would  by  the  world  be  regarded  as  fanatical ; "  ^  and  all 
the  evidence  goes  to  show  that,  whatever  were  his  faults  of  taste 
as  a  critic,  his  moral  attitude  to  his  fellow-creatures  was  that  of 
one  who  was,  as  he  claims  for  himself,  quixotically  high-minded. 
The  truth  is,  an  extensive  fallacy  underlies  the  aversion  which 
many  people  have  for  Poe  —  the  fallacy,  namely,  of  assuming 
that  a  large  share  of  what  is  vaguely  called  moral  or  human  senti- 
ment, in  an  author  or  in  any  one  else,  implies  a  security  for  right 
feeling  or  conduct;  and  that  the  absence  of  such  sentiment  from 
an  author's  fiction,  or  from  any  one's  talk,  implies  a  tendency  to 
wrong-doing.     And  the  same  fallacy,  I  think,  lurks  under  the  ob- 

•  Edgar  Poe  and  his  Critics,  p.  48. 


136  JOHN   MACKINNON    ROBERTSON 

servation  that  Poe's  mind,  if  not  immoral,  was  non-moral.  The 
assumption  in  question  is  a  sentimentality  that  is  discredited  by 
accurate  observation  of  life.  We  know,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that 
Poe's  attachments,  once  fprmed,  were  deep  and  intensely  faithful; 
nothing,  for  instance,  could  be  closer  or  lovelier  than  the  tie 
between  him  and  Mrs.  Clemm :  and  his  sensitiveness  was  extreme 
where  his  affections  were  concerned,  though  his  friendly  employer 
Willis  speaks  of  him  as  a  man  who  in  his  business  life  "never 
smiled  or  spoke  a  propitiatory  or  deprecating  word."  In  fact, 
if  Poe's  private  life  be  compared  with  that  of  Hawthorne  before  the 
latter's  marriage,  Poe  will  seem  the  man  of  domestic  and  sociable 
tendencies,  and  the  other  a  loveless  egoist.  His  son-in-law  tells 
us  that  Hawthorne  had  very  little  intercourse  with  his  mother  and 
sisters  while  living  in  the  same  house  with  them,  and  that  he  fre- 
quently had  his  meals  left  for  him  at  his  locked  door.^  Southey, 
too,  saw  little  of  his  family.  Yet  no  one  shivers  over  Hawthorne 
and  Southey  as  minds  without  hearts. 

To  return,  in  a  perfectly  dispassionate  spirit,  to  Lamb,  we  see 
that  his  wealth  of  kindly  sympathy  did  not  save  him  from  alcohol- 
ism; and  it  could  easily  be  shown  that  a  great  many  moralists 
have  been  either  gravely  immoral  characters  or  unamiable  and 
variously  objectionable.  Many  of  us  have  never  been  able  to  re- 
gard Dante  as  a  satisfactory  personality,  with  his  irrational  and 
capriciously  cruel  code  and  his  general  inhumanity;  and  a  good 
many  will  agree  that  Carlyle,  who  was  always  moralizing,  was  prone 
to  gross  injustice,  and  presents  a  rather  mixed  moral  spectacle 
in  his  own  life.  The  slight  on  Poe's  moral  nature  was  first  pub- 
lished by  the  sentimental  Griswold,  who  is  proved  to  have  been  a 
peculiarly  mean  and  malignant  slanderer;^  and  the  moral  Mr. 
Gilfillan  invented  a  gross  calumny.  Run  down  the  list  of  men  of 
genius  of  modern  times  who  have  discussed  conduct  and  human 
nature,  and  you  will  find  an  extremely  large  proportion  against 
whom  could  be  charged  blemishes  of  character  and  conduct  from 

'  Mr.  Henry  James's  Hawthorne,  p.  38,  citing  Mr.  Lathrop. 

^  Of  Griswold  Mr.  Ingram  writes  {Academy,  October  13,  1883)  that  he  "bore 
too  unsavoury  a  character  for  public  examination ;  but  those  interested  in  the  sub- 
ject may  be  referred  to  his  own  account  (in  the  British  Museum)  why  he  repudiated 
his  second  wife.  Thackeray,  having  proved  him  a  liar,  told  him  so  publicly, 
and  would  not  touch  his  proffered  hand;  while  Dickens  convicted  him  of  fraud, 
and  made  his  employers  pay  for  it."  Poe's  review  of  Griswold's  Poets  and  Poetry 
of  America  shows  (imprudently  enough)  the  small  esteem  in  which  he  held  his  fu- 
ture biographer,  who  seems  to  have  made  or  kept  up  his  acquaintance  in  order 
to  retaliate  for  the  critique  in  question. 


POE  '  137 

which  Poe  was  free.  The  ferocity  and  fanaticism  of  Dante,  the 
grossness  of  Chaucer,  the  hard  marital  selfishness  of  Milton, 
the  brutality  of  Luther,  the  boorishness  of  Johnson,  the  ripe  self- 
love  of  Wordsworth,  the  malice  of  Pope,  the  egoism  of  Goethe, 
the  murky  and  selfish  spleen  of  Carlyle,  the  bigotry  of  Southey 

—  all  these  are  repellent  and  anti-social  qualities  which  cannot  be 
charged  against  Edgar  Poe.  In  short,  the  ideal  man  of  lively 
moral  feeling  and  entirely  beneficent  conduct,  by  contrast  with 
whom  Poe  is  seen  to  be  an  incomplete  human  being,  has  never 
existed  in  flesh  and  blood;  and  if  we  take  the  rational  course  of 
striking  an  average  of  poor  humanity  we  shall  find,  as  before  sub- 
mitted, that  our  subject  does  not  fall  below  it.  We  may  even  go 
further.  In  regard  to  the  widespread  and  false  notion  that  Poe 
was  a  libertine,  we  may  indorse  the  assertion  of  Mr.  Stedman 
"that  professional  men  and  artists,  in  spite  of  a  vulgar  belief  to  the 
contrary,  are  purity  itself  compared  with  men  engaged  in  business, 
and  idle  men  of  the  world."  ^  Let  us  in  fairness  confess  that  the 
average  man  or  woman  is  likely  to  be  one  or  other  of  these  things 

—  narrow,  or  bigoted,  or  cowardly,  or  fickle,  or  mean,  or  gross, 
or  faithless,  or  coldly  selfish,  or  disingenuous,  or  hard,  or  slander- 
ous, or  recklessly  unjust;  though  one  or  other  of  these  qualities 
may  coexist  with  generosity,  or  philanthropy,  or  probity.  If  we 
recognize  so  much,  we  shall  cease  to  sermonize  on  Poe's  failings; 
and  proceed  rather  to  consider  how  rare  and  how  fine  his  work  was. 

Yet  another  fallacy,  however  —  to  call  it  by  no  worse  name  — 
blocks  for  some  the  way  to  a  sound  appreciation.  One  American 
critic,^  appealing  to  the  prevailing  dislike  of  Poe  in  the  States,  has 
grounded  a  sweeping  depreciation  of  his  work  on  the  proposition 
that  he  was  subject  to  brain  epilepsy.  On  that  head,  clearly,  there 
is  no  need  for  friendlier  people  to  wish  to  make  out  a  negative. 
To  begin  with,  there  is  independent  and  unprejudiced  testimony 
that  Poe  suffered  from  a  brain  trouble ;  and  whether  or  not  that 
trouble  was  cerebral  epilepsy  is  a  question  of  detail  chiefly  impor- 
tant to  thoughtful  speciaUsts.  During  the  serious  illness  which  fell 
on  Poe  after  his  wife's  death,  Mrs.  Clemm's  nursing  labours  were 
shared  by  a  true  and  valued  friend  of  the  little  family,  Mrs.  Marie 
Louise  Shew,  who  was  a  doctor's  only  daughter,  and  had  received 
a  medical  education ;  and  this  lady  has  written  as  follows :  — 

*  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  p.  92. 
•     2  Writing  in  Scribner's  Magazine,  Vol.  X,  1875. 


138  JOHN   MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 

"I  made  my  diagnosis,  and  went  to  the  great  Dr.  Mott  with  it.  I  told  him 
that  at  best,  when  Mr.  Poe  was  well,  his  pulse  beat  only  ten  regular  beats, 
after  which  it  suspended,  or  intermitted  (as  doctors  say).  I  decided  that  in  his 
best  health  he  had  lesion  of  one  side  of  the  brain,  and  as  he  could  not  bear 
stimulants  or  tonics,  without  producing  insanity,  I  did  not  feel  much  hope  that 
he  could  be  raised  up  from  brain  fever  brought  on  by  extreme  suffering  of 
mind  and  body  —  actual  want  and  hunger  and  cold  having  been  borne  by 
this  heroic  husband  in  order  to  supply  food,  medicine,  and  comforts  to  his 
dying  wife  —  until  exhaustion  and  lifelessness  were  so  near  at  every  reaction 
of  the  fever  that  even  sedatives  had  to  be  administered  withextreme  caution.'" ' 

The  latter  details  may  be  noted  as  telling  us  something  of  Poe's 
moral  nature ;  the  diagnosis  as  a  fairly  decisive  deliverance  on  the 
brain  question,  especially  when  taken  in  connection  with  other 
medical  evidence,  and  testimonies  as  to  the  startling  effect  of  a 
mouthful  of  sherry  or  even  a  glass  of  beer  on  Poe  at  times.  There 
is  altogether  good  reason  to  hold  that  his  brain  was  diseased.  But 
what  then  ?  To  say  nothing  of  the  well-worn  saw  that  great  wits 
have  their  place  near  the  region  of  madness,  biologists  ^  have  told 
us  that  cerebral  and  other  disease  may  intelligibly  be  and  has 
actually  been  a  cause  of  exceptional  intellectual  capacity.^  What 
of  Cuvier's  hydrocephalus  and  Keats's  precocious  maturity  ?  Even 
scrofula,  and  worse  affections  than  that,  have  been  maintained  or 
surmised  to  promote  cerebration:  the  formula  being  that  certain 
conditions  which  are  pathologically  classed  as  morbid  are  psycho- 
logically important  though  impermanent  variations.  Cromwell's 
inner  life  has  phenomena  in  some  points  analogous  to  Poe's ;  and 
if  it  comes  to  epilepsy,  we  have  to  reckon  with  a  confident  classifica- 
tion of  Mahomet  among  that  order  of  sufferers.  Lamb  was  for 
a  time  in  his  youth  actually  insane.  But  why  multiply  cases?  In 
what  other  instance  has  it  been  proposed  to  make  light  of  a  man's 
mental  achievements  because  his  brain  is  known  to  have  been 
flawed?  I  am  not  aware  that  any  deliberate  attempt  was  ever 
made  to  belittle  what  merits  Cowper  has,  because  of  his  affliction; 
or  that  Comte's  serious  antagonists  have  ever  given  countenance  to 
a  condemnation  of  his  philosophy  as  a  whole  on  the  strength  of  his 
fit  of  alienation,  even  though  mad  enough  passages  can  easily  be 

j  *  Ingram's  Lije  oj  Poe,  II,  115. 

^  This  was  written  before  the  thesis  of  "the  insanity  of  genius"  had  become 
popular. 

^  The  assailant  knows  as  much,  for  he  cites  Dr.  Maudsley  as  "very  positive  in 
his  opinion  that  the  world  is  indebted  for  a  great  part  of  its  originality,  and  for 
certain  special  forms  of  intellect,  to  individuals  who  .  .  .  have  sprung  from  fami- 
lies in  which  there  is  some  predisposition  to  epileptic  insanity."  But  the  attack 
is  as  destitute  of  coherence  as  of  justice  and  fitness  of  tone. 


POE  139 

cited  from  his  works.  It  has  been  left  for  an  American,  writing 
almost  unchallenged  by  the  literary  class  in  Poe's  native  land,  to 
proceed  from  an  argument  that  Poe  was  an  epileptic  to  a  monstrous 
corollary  of  unmeasured  detraction  from  almost  every  species  of 
credit  he  has  ever  received.'  Baudelaire,  discussing  Griswold's 
biography,  asked  whether  in  America  they  have  no  law  against 
letting  curs  into  the  cemeteries:  and  it  is  hardly  going  too  far  to  say 
that  this  latest  attack  on  a  great  memory  would  never  have  had 
even  a  hearing  in  a  well-ordered  literary  republic.  To  discuss 
it  in  detail  would  be  to  concede  too  much ;  but  I  have  thought  it 
well  to  cite  the  attack  with  the  note  that  not  only  has  no  adequate 
recognition  been  given  in  America  to  Poe's  intellectual  eminence 
(I  exclude  the  friendly  memoirs  and  vindications),  but  this  ex- 
travagantly wrong-headed  denial  of  it  secures  the  vogue  due  to  a 
true  estimate. 

The  ill-meant  aspersion,  let  us  hope,  will  after  all  make  for  a 
kindlier  feeling,  among  those  at  least  whose  good-will  a  man  of 
letters  need  wish  to  have  for  his  memory.  In  any  case,  it  is  in- 
credible that  any  literary  reputation  should  be  forever  measured 
on  such  principles  as  those  above  glanced  at.  Whatever  be  the 
whole  explanation  of  the  treatment  Poe  has  received  in  his  own 
country,  whether  it  be  his  small  affinity  to  the  national  life  or  the 
abundance  of  the  ill-will  he  aroused  by  pitiless  criticism  of  small 
celebrities,  criticism  in  the  States  must  needs  come  in  time  to  the 
temperate  study  of  his  work  and  his  endowment  on  their  merits. 
What  follows  is  an  attempt  in  that  direction. 

1  To  show  how  far  malice  may  go  astray  in  reasoning  from  misfortune  to  de- 
merit, it  may  be  worth  while  to  point  to  the  absolute  failure  of  this  writer's  attempt 
to  make  Poe's  brain  trouble  a  means  of  discrediting  his  work.  Poe,  he  tells  us, 
passed  through  three  psychological  periods:  the  first,  one  in  which  he  "seems  to 
depend  for  artistic  effect  on  minuteness  of  detail,"  as  in  the  Descent  into  the  Mael- 
strom, The  Gold  Bug,  the  Case  of  Monsieur  Valdeniar,  and  Hans  Pfaall  ("imitated," 
says  the  writer,  with  his  usual  culpable  inaccuracy,  "from  the  Moon  Hoax"); 
the  second,  a  time  of  predilection  for  minute  analysis,  such  as  is  shown  in  The 
Mystery  of  Marie  Roget ;  and  the  third,  a  spell  of  morbid  introspection,  producing 
such  tales  as  The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher.  Now,  what  are  the  facts  ?  The  last- 
mentioned  story  was  published  in  1839;  Ligeia  —  a  story  in  the  same  "morbid" 
taste  —  in  1838;  Berenice,  Morella,  ancl  Shadow,  all  productions  of  the  weird  order, 
in  1835;  Silence  in  1838;  and  the  eminently  introspective  tale  of  William  Wilson 
in  1839;  while  The  Facts  in  the  Case  of  M.  Vaidcmar  appeared  in  1845;  The 
Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue  in  1841,  and  Marie  Roget  in  1842.  Thus  we  have  the 
works  of  "morbid  introspection"  before  the  specifically  cited  studies  in  minute  de- 
tail and  minute  analysis  —  the  Usher  story  before  the  Marie  Roget  and  the  Valde- 
mar;  and  such  a  production  as  Morella  almost  contemporary  with  Hans  Pfaall. 
The  theor\'  of  development  breaks  down  at  every  point. 


I40  JOHN  MACKINNON  ROBERTSON 


II 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that  fully  nine-tenths  of  the  criticism  passed 
on  Poe,  appreciative  and  otherwise,  has  been  directed  to  his  small 
body  of  poetry.  The  fact  serves  at  once  to  prove  the  one-sidedness 
of  the  average  literary  man  and  the  range  of  Poe's  power.  He  had 
a  working  knowledge  of  astronomy,  of  navigation,  of  mechanics, 
and  of  physics;  he  certainly  compiled  a  manual  of  conchology, 
and  had  at  least  dipped  into  entomology;  he  could  work  out 
ciphers  in  half  a  dozen  languages ;  he  delighted  in  progressions  of 
close  and  sustained  reasoning;  he  had  a  decided  capacity  for  logic 
and  philosophy;  he  eagerly  followed  and  easily  assimilated,  or 
even  in  part  anticipated,  the  modern  physical  theories  of  the  uni- 
verse ;  he  was  a  keen  and  scientific  literary  critic ;  and  in  addition 
to  all  this  he  produced  some  of  the  most  remarkable  imaginative 
writing  and  some  of  the  finest  poetry  of  the  century.  But  his 
critics  have  been,  with  very  few  exceptions,  men  of  purely  literary 
equipment;  verse-writers  and  bellettrists  and  story-tellers,  who 
judge  only  verse  and  prose  and  character.  Sharing  their  depriva- 
tions, I  have  gone  through  most  of  their  writings  on  the  watch  for 
an  estimate  of  the  scientific  and  constructive  capacity  shown  in 
certain  of  the  Tales,  and  have  found  an  almost  unanimous  and 
doubtless  judicious  silence  on  the  subject.  An  occasional  non- 
committal phrase  about  the  Eureka,  and  a  few  generalities  on  the 
scientific  element  in  the  Tales,  represent  the  critical  commentary 
on  the  ratiocinative  side  of  Poe's  intellect.  Now,  to  treat  his  verse 
as  his  most  significant  product  is  to  ignore  half  his  remarkableness, 
and  to  miss  those  kinds  of  strength  and  eminence  in  his  mind  which 
most  effectively  outweigh  the  flaws  of  his  character  and  the  occa- 
sional exorbitances  of  his  judgment.  Save  in  his  own  country, 
indeed,  the  Tales  have  had  popular  recognition  enough.  Poe's 
countrymen  never  bought  up  Griswold's  edition  of  his  works,  and 
have  till  quite  recently  been  without  a  complete  collection  of  them; 
but  Mr.  Gill  has  calculated  that  while  the  poems  are  five-fold 
more  popular  in  England  than  in  America,  the  stories  are  even 
more  widely  admired  among  us ;  and  they  have  been  thoroughly 
naturalized  in  France  in  a  complete  and  admirable  translation, 
chiefly  by  Baudelaire;  besides  being  reproduced  to  a  greater  or 
less  extent  in  nearly  every  other  European  language.  Seeing  that 
they  were  eagerly  read  on  their  first  appearance  in  America,  it 


POE  141 

must  be  assumed  that,  as  Mr.  Gill  suggests,  the  public  there 
were  scared  ofif  by  Griswold's  slanders  and  the  consequent  myth. 
But  if,  with  all  this  European  vogue  for  the  Tales,  critics  continue 
to  descant  chiefly  on  the  poetry,  the  inference  as  to  its  impressive 
quality  is  irresistible. 

Perhaps  by  reason  of  the  sub-rational  tendency  to  disparage 
specially  an  author  of  one's  own  country  who  is  loudly  praised  by 
foreigners,  some  living  American  writers  have  spoken  with  absolute 
contempt  of  Poe's  poetry.  Mr.  Henry  James,  for  instance,  has  a 
strange  phrase  about  his  "very  valueless  verses";^  and  Mr. 
Stoddard's  strongest  feeling  in  the  matter  appears  to  be  an  aversion 
to  the  refrains  —  perhaps  not  an  unnatural  attitude  towards  Poe 
on  the  part  of  a  critic  who  believes  a  poet  may  have  too  much  art. 
In  these  circumstances  it  may  still  be  expedient  to  follow  Mr. 
Stedman  in  bearing  witness  to  the  quality  of  Poe's  poetry.  It  is 
perhaps  true,  as  has  been  said  by  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  that 
there  is  almost  no  poet  between  whose  best  and  worst  verse  there 
is  a  wider  disparity;  but  that  is  rather  by  reason  of  the  fineness  of 
the  good  than  of  the  badness  of  the  bad ;  and  the  latter,  in  any  case, 
consists  simply  of  the  long  poems  of  Poe's  youth  —  Al  Aaraaf, 
Tamerlane,  and  the  Scenes  from  Politian.  Mr.  Lang,  in  editing 
the  whole,  has  not  scrupled  to  indicate  his  feeling  that  these  are 
hardly  worth  reading;  and  while  one  feels  that  in  that  view  per- 
haps the  proper  course  were  not  to  edit  them,  so  much  may  be 
conceded.  In  regard  to  some  of  the  successful  poems,  again, 
there  is  to  be  reckoned  with  the  disenchanting  effect  of  extreme 
popularity;  an  influence  of  the  most  baffling  sort,  often  blurring 
one's  critical  impression  in  a  way  for  which  there  is  hardly  any 
remedy.  The  choicest  air,  as  it  had  once  seemed,  may  be  made  to 
acquire  associations  of  the  barrel  organ;  and  it  may  ultimately 
become  a  fine  question  whether  it  was  not  a  vice  in  it  to  be  so  asso- 
ciate. One  may  brazen  out  one's  early  attachment,  as,  I  fancy, 
Mr.  Arnold  did  when  he  lately  insisted  that  Lucy  Gray  was  a 
"beautiful  success " ;  but  when  loyalty  to  an  old  opinion  is  justified 
merely  by  its  survival,  criticism  is  turned  out  of  doors.  So  that, 
lest  we   are  insidiously  led  into  committing  the  unpardonable 

1  In  the  essay  on  Baudelaire  in  the  volume  French  Poets  and  Novelists,  ed.  1878, 
p.  76.  Since  this  essay  was  first  printed  I  find  that  in  the  Tauchnitz  edition  of  his 
book  Mr.  James  has  altered  "valueless"  to  "superficial."  I  let  my  criticism 
{infra)  stand  as  it  was  written,  only  pointing  out  that  the  change  of  epithet  is  sig- 
nificant of  weakness  of  ground,  and  that  the  second  form  is  even  worse  than  the 
first.     When  was  verse  so  aspersed  before? 


142  JOHN   MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 

critical  sin  of  certificating  popular  poetry  by  its  popularity,  it  will 
be  well  to  consider  brielly  in  the  concrete  the  merits  of  Tlie  Raven. 
Many  of  us,  I  suspect,  have  at  one  time  developed  a  suspicion 
that  that  much-recited  work  is  not  poetry  of  the  first  order ;  and  the 
suspicion  is  deepened  when  we  reflect  that  the  distinction  of  learn- 
ing it  by  heart  in  our  youth  was  conferred  on  it  in  common  with 
other  works  as  to  which  there  can  now  be  no  critical  dubiety. 
It  is  difficult  to  gainsay  ISIr.  Lang  when  he  impugns  its  right,  and 
that  of  Lenore,  to  the  highest  poetical  honours:  both  poems,  like 
The  Bells,  have  a  certain  smell  of  the  lamp,  an  air  of  compilation, 
a  suspicion  of  the  inorganic.  And  yet  a  studious  rereading  of 
The  Raven  may  awaken  some  remorse  for  such  detractions.  Not 
only  has  it  that  impressiveness  of  central  conception  which  is 
never  lacking  in  Poe's  serious  work,  but  it  is  really  a  memorable 
piece  of  technique.  It  is  hardly  possible  to  say  where  inspiration 
lacks  and  mechanism  intervenes:  the  poem  is  an  effective  unity. 
Some  hold  that  the  touches  of  plagiarism  —  the  "uncertain  "  sound 
of  the  "purple  curtain,"  and  the  collocation  of  "desolate"  and 
"desert  land,"  both  echoes  from  Mrs.  Browning's  Lady  Geraldine^ 
—  serve  to  discredit  the  whole ;  but  that  is  surely  false  criticism. 
The  problem  is,  whether  the  appropriations  are  assimilated;  and 
they  clearly  are.  Mrs.  Browning  herself  expressed  the  com- 
manding individuality  of  the  work  in  the  phrase  "this  power 
which  is  felt."  The  poem  has  that  distinctive  attribute  of  most  of 
Poe's  writing,  the  pregnancy  of  idea,  the  compulsive  imagination 
which  fascinates  and  dominates  the  reader.  One  feels  behind  it 
a  creative  and  sustaining  power,  a  power  as  of  absolute  intellect. 
To  feel  specifically  the  impact  of  this  influence,  let  the  reader  com- 
pare the  poem  as  a  whole  with  Lady  Gcraldine's  Courtship,  and 
note  how,  ample  as  is  the  poetess's  gift  of  speech,  choice  as  are 
her  harmonies,  and  fortunate  as  are  many  of  her  lines,  there  is 
yet  a  something  spasmodic  and  convulsive  pervading  the  whole, 
a  tone  of  passionate  weakness,  in  full  keeping  with  the  hysterical 
character  of  the  girlish  hero,  which  gives  a  quite  fatal  emphasis  to 
the  frequent  lapses  of  expression,  these  seeming  to  belong  to  weak- 
ness and  slovenliness;  while  in  reading  The  Raven  there  is  hardly 
for  a  moment  room  for  a  disrespectful  sensation.     The  imperious 

1  One  of  the  disputed  points  as  to  which  there  should  never  have  been  any 
dispute  is  the  question  of  priority  in  these  passages.  One  critic,  who  imputes 
phigiarisms  to  Poe,  brusquely  asserts  that  Mrs.  Browning  was  the  imitator.  The 
plain  facts  are  that  her  poem  was  published  in  1844,  and  Poe's  in  1845,  'i"^  that 
Poe  admired  her  poetry  greatly. 


POE  143 

brain  of  the  "maker,"  as  the  old  vernacular  would  straightfor- 
wardly name  him,  stamps  its  authority  on  every  line;  and  the 
subtle  sense  of  the  artist's  puissance  remains  unaffected  by  the 
despairing  avowal  of  the  conclusion.  The  speaker  may  sink 
prostrate,  but  the  poem  is  never  shaken  in  its  serene  movement 
and  marble  firmness  of  front.  It  has  "cette  extraordinaire  eleva- 
tion, cette  exquise  delicatesse,  cet  accent  d'immortaUte  qu'  Edgar 
Poe  exige  de  la  Muse,"  ^  remarked  on  by  Baudelaire ;  and  nothing 
in  the  poem  is  more  remarkable  than  the  Apollonian  impunity 
with  which  the  poet  is  able  to  relax  and  coUoquialize  his  phraseol- 
ogy. Mrs.  Browning  could  not  venture  without  disaster  on  such 
an  infusion  of  realism  into  idealism  as  the  "Sir,  said  I,  or  Madam," 
and  "the  fact  is,  I  was  napping:"  her  Pegasus,  in  view  of  his 
habitual  weakness  of  knee,  would  be  felt  to  have  stumbled  in  such 
a  line  as :  — 

"  Though  its  answer  Httle  meaning,  little  relevancy  bore"  — 

where  Poe  sweeps  us  over  by  his  sheer  unswerving  intentness  on  his 
theme.  The  explanation  seems  to  be  that  the  writer  himself  is 
without  apparent  consciousness  of  artistic  fallibility  —  that  he  is 
pure  intellect  addressing  an  abstract  reader;  and  that,  as  he  never 
seems  to  strain  after  words,  he  has  a  regal  air  of  having  said  pre- 
cisely what  should  be  said;  so  that  when  we  read  of  "a  stately 
raven  of  the  saintly  days  of  yore,"  we  hesitate  to  impugn  the  fitness 
of  the  term.  What,  then,  is  it  in  The  Raven  that  takes  it  out  of 
the  first  rank  of  poetry  ?  Well,  then,  first,  the  admixture  of  simple 
oddity,  which  is  disallowed  by  Poe's  own  law  that  poetry  is  the 
"rhythmical  creation  of  beauty";  and,  second,  the  decomposa- 
bilit'y  of  the  structure  at  two  points,  namely,  the  factitious  rustling 
of  the  curtains,  which  have  no  business  to  rustle,  and  the  falhng 
of  the  shadow,  which  has  no  right  to  fall.^  These  touches  are 
"willed";  and,  on  reflection,  have  the  effect  of  obtruding  their 
art  upon  us ;  whereas  the  perfect  poem  must  seem  homogeneous 
and  inevitably  what  it  is.  It  is  sometimes  argued  that  the 
very  continuity  and  clearness  of  the  tale  in  themselves  vitiate 
the   work,   as   dispelling   true   glamour;    and   assuredly,  though 

1  [That  extraordinan'  elevation,  that  exquisite  delicacy,  that  accent  of  immor- 
talitv  which  Edgar  Poe  demands  of  the  Muse.] 

2'Poe,  in  a  letter  given  by  Mr.  Ingram  (Life,  I,  275),  says  his  idea  about  the 
light  was  "the  bracket  candelabrum  affixed  against  the  wall,  high  up  above  the 
door  and  bust,  as  is  often  seen  in  the  English  palaces  ( !),  and  even  in  some  of 
the  better  houses  of  New  York."     It  will  not  do. 


144  JOHN  MACKINNON  ROBERTSON 

it  is  made  apparently  certain  by  Poe's  own  avowal  that  The 
Genesis  of  the  Raven  was  a  hoax/  there  can  be  little  doubt  that 
the  poem  was  most  carefully  put  together.  But  to  depreciate  a 
work  of  art  on  such  a  ground  as  that  is  a  quite  illicit  proceeding. 
Results  must  be  judged  on  their  merits.  And,  indeed,  the  mere 
flaws  in  the  rationale  of  the  piece,  scarcely  perceptible  as  they  are, 
would  not  in  themselves  suffice  to  invalidate  it,  any  more  than  the 
clear  flaw  in  the  logic  of  the  second-last  stanza  of  Keats's  Ode  to 
the  Nightingale  discredits  that :  they  do  but  accentuate  the  force 
of  the  objection  to  the  un-elevated  though  still  dignified  tone  of  the 
stanzas  and  the  consequent  narrative  stamp  on  the  whole.  But 
even  in  making  these  admissions,  the  lover  of  verse  must  insist 
on  the  singular  power  of  the  composition;  which  remains  more 
extraordinary  than  much  other  work  that  is  more  strictly  success- 
ful.    Poe's  second-best  verse  has  a  distinction  of  its  own. 

If,  then.  The  Raven  is  thus  dismissed ;  and  if,  as  must  needs  be, 
Lenore  is  pronounced  a  piece  of  brilliant  mosaic,  and  The  Bells 
is  classed  as  a  fine  piece  of  literary  architecture  rather  than  a  poetic 
creation,  we  shall  have  left  but  a  small  body  of  work  from  which 
to  choose  our  specimens  of  Poe's  fine  poetry.  But  what  remains 
will  serve.  Poe  never  professed  to  make  poetry  his  main  aim,  or 
even  an  aim  at  all:  it  was  his  "passion";  and  what  is  here  con- 
tended is  that,  many-sided  as  he  was,  he  had  a  poetic  faculty  of  the 
highest  kind,  among  other  powers  which  few  or  no  other  poets  have 
possessed.  The  decisive  credentials  of  perfect  poetry  are  an  or- 
ganic oneness  of  substance,  that  substance  being  of  a  purer  essence 
than  ordinary  speech;  a  quality  of  meaning  which  pierces  to  the 
sense  without  the  methodic  specification  of  prose;  and  a  charm  of 
rhythm  and  phrase  which  is  a  boon  in  itself,  permanently  recog- 
nizable as  such  apart  from  any  truth  enclosed.  These,  broadly 
speaking,  are  the  "values"  of  poetry;  and  he  who  says  Poe's 
verse  is  valueless  must,  I  think,  be  adjudged  to  be  without  the  poetic 
sense.  Mr.  James  must  presumably  have  meant  one  of  two  things : 
either  that  Poe's  poetry  conveys  no  moral  teachings  or  descriptions 
of  life  and  scenery  —  these  constituting  the  "valuable"  element  in 
poetry  for  those  to  whom  its  special  qualities  do  not  appeal  —  or 
that  its  art  is  commonplace.  The  first  objection  need  only  be  con- 
ceived to  be  dismissed ;  the  second,  supposing  it  to  have  been 
that  intended,  which  I  doubt,  would  need  no  answer  beyond  a  few 
quotations.  Among  Poe's  early  poems  is  one  To  Helen,  which  he  is 
'  Professor  Minto,  however,  declined  to  believe  that  it  really  was  so. 


POE  145 

said  to  have  represented  as  being  composed  when  he  was  fourteen, 
the  Helen,  on  that  view,  being  supposed  to  be  the  lady,  mother  of 
his  school  friend,  who  was  kind  to  the  boy,  and  whose  death  he  so 
passionately  mourned.  In  view  at  once  of  Poe's  habit  of  mysti- 
fication and  of  the  nature  of  the  poem,  I  cannot  believe  that  is  the 
true  account  of  the  matter.  The  verses  are  not  those  of  a  boy  of 
fourteen.  But  they  were  undoubtedly  written  in  Poe's  teens,  and 
I  cite  them  as  constituting  one  of  the  most  ripely  perfect  and  spir- 
itually charming  poems  ever  written  at  that  or  any  age :  — 

"Helen,  thy  beauty  is  to  me 

Like  those  Niccean  barks  of  yore 
Which  gently,  o'er  a  perfumed  sea, 
The  weary,  way-worn  wanderer  bore 
To  his  own  native  shore. 

"  On  desperate  seas  long  wont  to  roam, 

Thy  hyacinth  hair,  thy  classic  face, 
Thy  Naiad  airs  have  brought  me  home, 

To  the  glory  that  was  Greece, 
And  '  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome. 

"  Lo !  in  yon  brilliant  window  niche, 
How  statue -like  I  see  thee  stand. 
Thy  agate  lamp  within  thy  hand  — 
Ah,  Psyche  !   from  the  regions  which 
Are  Holy  Land!" 

Merely  to  credit  these  verses  with  "Horatian  elegance,"  as  some 
admiring  critics  have  done,  is  to  render  them  scant  justice.  They 
have  not  only  Horace's  fastidiousness  of  touch  (with  perhaps  the 
single  reservation  of  the  unluckily  hackneyed  "classic  face")  but 
the  transfiguring  aerial  charm  of  pure  poetry,  which  is  not  in 
Horace's  line.  The  two  closing  lines  of  the  middle  stanza  have 
passed  into  the  body  of  choice  distillations  of  language  reserved  for 
immortality;  and  there  is  assuredly  nothing  more  exquisite  in  its 
kind  in  English  literature  than  the  last  stanza.  To  have  written 
such  verses  is  to  have  done  a  perfect  thing.  Turn  next  to  The 
Haunted  Palace,  an  experiment  in  the  perilous  field  of  poetic 

>  Some  editions  read  "To  the  grandeur."  I  simply  follow  that  reading  which 
best  pleases  me.  It  is  interesting  to  know,  by  the  way,  that  these  famous  lines,  in 
the  edition  of  1831,  ran  thus:  — 


"To  the  beauty  of  fair  Greece 
And  the  grandeur  of  old  Rome." 


What  a  transmutation  1 
L 


146  JOHN  MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 

allegory.  What  poet  had  before  essayed  that  with  perfect  success  ? 
I  will  not  venture  to  say  that  no  one  has;  but  I  can  call  to  mind  no 
instance.  According  to  Griswold,  The  Haunted  Palace  is  a  pla- 
giarism from  Longfellow's  Beleaguered  City,^  a  futile  imputation, 
which  only  serves  to  help  us  to  a  fuller  recognition  of  Poe's  success. 
Personally,  I  have  a  certain  tenderness  for  The  Beleaguered  City 
as  being  one  of  the  first  imaginative  poems  that  impressed  my 
boyhood;  but  no  prejudice  of  that  sort  can  hinder  any  one  from 
seeing  that  the  poem  is  vitiated  by  its  nugatory  didacticism  — 
the  fatal  snare  of  the  allegorist.  Mr.  James,  in  his  Hawthorne, 
appears  to  think  (though  this  is  not  clear)  that  he  has  caught  Poe 
condemning  himself  in  a  critical  declaration  against  allegory; 
but  I  suspect  the  inconsistency  is  more  apparent  than  real.  Poe 
almost  never,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  uses  allegory  for  the  purpose  of 
sustaining  a  thesis,  which  is  the  thing  he  objects  to.  The  generic 
difference  between  the  allegory  of  The  Haunted  Palace  and  that  of 
The  Beleaguered  City  is  that  the  latter  is  a  kind  of  confused  ser- 
mon, while  the  other  is  a  pure  artistic  creation  —  a  changing  vision 
projected  for  its  own  sake  and  yoked  to  no  "moral."  Didactic 
poetry  there  may  be,  in  a  happy  imposition  of  poetic  quality  on  a 
moral  truth,  which  ordinarily  gravitates  towards  prose;  but  to 
make  allegory  pointedly  didactic  is  deliberately  to  impose  prose  on 
the  poetic,  and  this  Poe  never  does  in  his  poetry  proper.  He  simply 
limns  his  image  and  leaves  it,  a  thing  of  uncontaminated  art.  The 
Haunted  Palace  is  the  allegory  of  a  brain  once  of  royal  power, 
shrined  in  noble  features,  but  at  length  become  a  haunt  of  mad- 
ness —  a  half-conscious  allusion,  perhaps,  to  the  poet's  own  dark 
destiny;  but  there  is  no  precept,  not  even  a  hint  of  the  ethical: 
the  strange  imagination  is  unrolled  in  its  terrible  beauty,  and  that 
is  all.  The  singer  is  a  "maker,"  not  a  commentator.  And  then 
the  melody  and  surprise  of  the  verse ! 

"Banners  yellow,  glorious,  golden, 

On  its  roof  did  float  and  flow, 
(This  —  all  this  —  was  in  the  olden 

Time,  long  ago) ; 
And  every  gentle  air  that  dallied, 
In  that  sweet  day, 

Along  the  ramparts  plumed  and  pallid, 
A  winged  Odour  went  away." 

*  The  Palace  appeared  first,  April,   1839;    the  City  in  November  (Ingram's 
Life,  I,  160).     And  Poe  accused  Longfellow  of  imitating  him! 


POE  147 

Longfellow  could  do  some  things  in  rhyme  and  rhythm,  but  his 
genial  talent  did  not  accomplish  such  singing  as  this,  and  as  little 
could  he  compass  the  serene  height  of  strain  which  Poe  maintains 
with  such  certainty. 

Every  charge  of  poetic  plagiarism  against  Poe  does  but  estab- 
lish more  clearly  his  utter  originality  of  method.^  Mrs.  Browning 
and  Longfellow,  whom  he  is  charged  with  imitating,  are  themselves 
facile  imitators,  who,  somehow,  do  not  contrive  to  improve  on 
their  originals ;  but  Poe,  in  the  one  or  two  cases  in  which  he  really 
copied  in  his  adult  period,  lent  a  new  value  to  what  he  took.  Where 
he  seems  to  have  adopted  ideas  from  others  the  transmutation 
is  still  more  striking.  A  writer  already  referred  to,  who  is  as  far 
astray  in  laying  as  in  denying  charges  of  plagiarism  against  Poe, 
declares  that  his  Dreamland  "palpably  paraphrases  Lucian's 
Island  of  Sleep''  —  meaning,  I  suppose,  the  description  of  the 
Island  of  Dreams  in  the  True  History;  and  the  statement  is  so  far 
true  that  in  Lucian  there  is  a  Temple  of  Night  in  the  Island,  and 
that  the  categories  of  the  dreams  include  visions  of  old  friends ;  but 
to  call  the  poem  a  paraphrase  is  absurd.  There  is  all  the  difference 
of  seventeen  hundred  years  of  art  between  the  Greek's  semi-serious 
fantasy  and  the  profound  and  magical  note  of  Poe's  poem :  — 

"  By  a  route  obscure  and  lonely, 
Haunted  by  ill  angels  only, 
Where  an  Eidolon,  named  Night, 
On  a  black  throne  reigns  upright, 
I  have  reached  these  lands  but  newly 
From  an  ultimate  dim  Thule  — 
From  a  wild,  weird  clime  that  lieth  sublime, 
Out  of  Space  —  out  of  Time." 

Genius,  Mr.  Arnold  has  well  said,  is  mainly  an  affair  of  energy; 
and  the  definition  would  hold  for  all  the  work  of  Poe,  whose  crea- 
tions, in  the  last  analysis,  are  found  to  draw  their  power  from  the 
extraordinary  intensity  which  belonged  to  his  every  mental  opera- 

1  There  is  a  certain  air  of  Nemesis  in  these  charges  against  Poe,  who  was  apt 
tT  be  fanatical  in  imputing  plagiarism  to  others.  But  it  is  remarkable  that  no  one 
has  ever  pointed  out  that  Poe's  own  excellent  definition  of  poetry,  "the  rhythmical 
creation  of  beauty"  (Essay  on  The  Poetic  Principle),  is  a  condensation  of  a  sen- 
tence by  (of  all  men)  Griswold.  See  Poe's  notice  of  Griswold's  Poets  and  Poetry  of 
America  (Ingram's  ed.  of  Works,  IV,  315).  It  may  be  noted  that  Poe's  treatment 
of  Griswold  in  this  notice  is  remarkably  friendly;  and  whatever  of  offence  he  may 
have  given  his  future  biographer  in  his  lecture  on  the  same  subject,  the  latter  must 
have  been  a  malignant  soul  indeed  to  seek  for  it,  in  the  face  of  such  amends,  the 
vile  revenge  he  subsequently  took. 


148  JOHN   MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 

tion  —  an  intensity  perfectly  frefe  of  violence.  Be  his  fancy  ever 
so  shadowy  in  its  inception,  he  informs  it  with  the  impalpable  force 
of  intellect  till  it  becomes  a  vision  more  enduring  than  brass.  There 
is  no  poet  who  can  so  "give  to  aery  nothing  a  local  habitation  and 
a  name."  It  was  perhaps  not  so  wonderful  after  all  that  common- 
place people  should  shun,  as  hardly  belonging  to  human  clay,  the 
personality  which  brooded  out  such  visions  as  these :  ^  — 

"  Lo  !   Death  has  reared  himself  a  throne 
In  a  strange  city,  lying  alone 
Far  down  within  the  dim  West  .  .  . 

"No  rays  from  the  Holy  Heaven  xome  down 
On  the  long  night-time  of  that  town ; 
But  light  from  out  the  lurid  sea 
Streams  up  the  turrets  silently  — 
Gleams  up  the  pinnacles  far  and  free  — 
Up  domes  —  up  spires  —  up  kingly  halls  — 
Up  fanes  —  up  Babylon-like  walls  — 
Up  shadowy  long-forgotten  bowers 
Of  sculptured  ivy  and  stone  flowers  — 
Up  many  and  many  a  marvellous  shrine 
Whose  wreathed  friezes  intertwine 
The  viol,  the  violet,  and  the  vine. 

"  Resignedly  beneath  the  sky 
The  melancholy  waters  lie. 
So  blend  the  turrets  and  shadows  there 
That  all  seems  pendulous  in  air, 
While,  from  a  proud  tower  in  the  town, 
Death  looks  gigantically  down  .  .  . 

"  No  swellings  tell  that  winds  may  be 
Upon  some  far-off  happier  sea  — 
No  heavings  hint  that  winds  have  been 
On  seas  less  hideously  serene." 

With  unwaning  vividness  the  unearthly  vision  burns  itself  tremor- 
less  upon  the  void,  till  it  is  almost  with  a  shudder  of  relief  that  the 
spellbound  reader  cons  the  close :  — 

i  "  And  when,  amid  no  earthly  moans, 

Down,  down  that  town  shall  settle  hence, 
Hell,  rising  from  a  thousand  thrones, 
Shall  do  it  reverence." 

•  In  such  poems,  and  in  some  of  the  Tales,  it  may  very  well  be  that  opium  has 
had  some  part,  as  it  so  clearly  had  in  the  happiest  inspirations  of  Coleridge. 


FOE  149 

Perhaps  such  terrific  imaginings  can  never  be  taken  into  common 
favour  with  healthy  dwellers  in  the  sunlit  world ;  but  it  is  hard  to 
understand  how  any,  having  studied  them,  can  find  them  forget- 
able.  It  cannot  for  a  moment  be  pretended  of  these  verses,  even 
by  the  sciolists  of  criticism,  that  they  lack  "inspiration"  and  spon- 
taneity of  movement;  detraction  must  seek  other  ground.  We 
find,  consequently,  that  the  stress  of  the  hostile  attack  is  turned 
mainly  on  one  poem,  in  which  the  poet's  customary  intension  of 
idea  appears  to  lose  itself  more  or  less  in  a  dilettantist  ringing  of 
changes  on  sound.  I  have  no  desire  to  seem  in  the  least  degree  to 
stake  Poe's  reputation  on  Ulalume,  which  trenches  too  far  on  pure 
mysticism  for  entire  artistic  success,  and  at  the  same  time  is  marked 
by  an  undue  subordination  of  meaning  to  music;  but  I  cannot 
help  thinking  that  the  dead  set  made  at  that  piece  is  unjustifiable. 
Mr.  R.  H.  Stoddard  is  exceptionally  acrid  on  the  subject. 

"I  can  perceive,"  he  writes,  in  a  memoir  of  Poe,  "no  touch  of  grief  in 
Ulalume,  no  intellectual  sincerity,  but  a  diseased  determination  to  create  the 
strange,  the  remote,  and  the  terrible,  and  to  exhaust  ingenuity  in  order  to  do 
so.  No  healthy  mind  was  ever  impressed  by  Ulalume,  and  no  musical  sense 
was  ever  gratified  with  its  measure,  which  is  little  beyond  a  jingle ;  and  with 
its  repetitions,  which  add  to  its  length  without  increasing  its  general  effect, 
and  which  show  more  conclusively  than  anything  else  in  the  language  the 
absurdity  of  the  refrain  when  it  is  allowed  to  run  riot,  as  it  does  here."  ^ 

Now,  this  censure  is  fatally  overdone.  Mr.  Stoddard  had  on  the 
very  page  before  admitted  that  Ulalume  was,  "all  things  consid- 
ered, the  most  singular  poem  that  [Poe]  ever  produced,  if  not,  in- 
deed, the  most  singular  poem  that  anybody  ever  produced,  in  com- 
memoration of  a  dead  woman."  A  critic  should  know  his  own 
mind  before  he  begins  to  write  out  a  judgment.  Here  we  have 
an  explicit  admission  of  the  extreme  remarkableness  of  a  given 
poem;  then  a  denial  that  it  ever  "impressed  a  healthy  mind"; 
then  an  unmeasured  allegation  that  "no  musical  sense  was  ever 
gratified  "  with  its  musical  elements.  Let  one  stanza  answer  — 
the  praise  of  the  star  Astarte :  — 

"  And  I  said :  '  She  is  warmer  than  Dian  : 
She  rolls  through  an  ether  of  sighs  — 
She  revels  in  a  region  of  sighs: 
She  has  seen  that  the  tears  are  not  dry  on 

Those  cheeks,  where  the  worm  never  dies, 
And  has  come  past  the  stars  of  the  Lion 
To  point  us  the  path  to  the  skies  — 
To  the  Lethean  peace  of  the  skies  — 

^  Memoir  in  Widdleton's  ed.  of  Poe,  p.  130. 


150  JOHN   MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 

Come  up,  in  despite  of  the  Lion, 

To  shine  on  us  with  her  bright  eyes  — 
Come  up  through  the  lair  of  the  Lion, 

With  love  in  her  luminous  eyes.'" 

Mr.  Stoddard  must  be  told  that  there  are  some  of  us  who  do  not 
wish  any  of  these  repetitions  away,  and  who  think  the  culminating 
music  is  closely  analogous  to  effects  produced  a  hundred  times  by 
Mozart  and  Schubert  and  Beethoven,  who  had  all  some  little  gift 
of  melody,  and  were  considerably  given  to  the  "repetend,"  as  Mr. 
Stedman  happily  re-christens  the  so-called  refrain.  The  above- 
quoted  stanza  is  the  best,  no  doubt,  and  there  is  one  flaw  in  it, 
namely,  the  "dry  on,"  which  is  truly  an  exhaustion  of  ingenuity; 
but  even  here  one  is  struck  by  the  imperial  way  in  which  Poe  but- 
tresses his  lapse  with  the  whole  serene  muster  of  his  stanza  —  so 
curiously  different  a  procedure  from  the  fashion  in  which  Mr. 
Swinburne,  for  instance,  or  even  Mr.  Browning,  scoops  a  rhyme- 
borne  figure  into  his  verse  and,  consciously  hurrying  on,  leaves  it, 
in  its  glaring  irrelevance,  to  put  the  whole  out  of  countenance. 
Poe's  few  deflections  from  purity  of  style  are  dominated  by  his 
habitual  severity  of  form.  As  for  the  charge  of  insincerity,  it  is 
enough  to  say  that  it  has  been  brought  against  every  poet  who  has 
artistically  expressed  a  grief;  it  being  impossible  for  some  people 
to  realize  that  art  feeds  on  deep  feelings,  not  at  the  moment  of  their 
first  freshness,  but  when  revived  in  memory.  A  more  reasonable  ob- 
jection is  brought  against  Ulaliime  on  the  score  of  its  obscurity ;  but 
that  too  is  exaggerated;  and  the  announcement  of  one  critic  that 
it  is  a  "vagary  of  mere  words,"  of  an  "elaborate  emptiness,"  is  an 
avowal  of  defective  intelligence.  The  meaning  of  the  poem  is  this  : 
the  poet  has  fallen  into  a  revery  in  the  darkness;  and  his  brain  — 
the  critic  says  it  was  then  a  tottering  brain  —  is  carrying  on  a  kind 
of  dual  consciov.f;ness,  compounded  of  a  perception  of  the  blessed 
peace  of  the  night  and  a  vague,  heavy  sense  of  his  abiding  grief, 
which  has  for  the  moment  drifted  into  the  background.  In  this 
condition  he  does  what  probably  most  of  us  have  done  in  connection 
with  a  minor  trouble  —  dreamily  asks  himself,  "What  was  the 
shadow  that  was  brooding  on  my  mind,  just  a  little  while  ago?" 
and  then  muses,  "If  I  have  forgotten  it,  why  should  I  wilfully  re- 
vive my  pain,  instead  of  inhaling  peace  while  I  may?"  This,  I 
maintain,  is  a  not  uncommon  experience  in  fatigued  states  of  the 
brain;  the  specialty  in  Poe's  case  being  that  the  temporarily  sus- 
pended ache  is  the  woe  of  a  bereavement  —  a  kind  of  woe  which, 


FOE  151 

after  a  certain  time,  however  sincere,  ceases  to  be  constant,  and 
begins  to  be  intermittent.  The  Psyche  is  the  obscure  whisper  of 
the  tired  heart,  the  suspended  memory,  that  will  not  be  wholly 
appeased  with  the  beauty  of  the  night  and  the  stars;  and  the  poet 
has  but  cast  into  a  mystical  dialogue  the  interplay  of  the  waking 
and  the  half-sleeping  sense,  which  goes  on  till  some  cypress,  some 
symbol  of  the  grave,  flashes  its  deadly  message  on  the  shrinking 
soul,  and  grief  leaps  into  full  supremacy.  Supposing  Poe's  brain 
to  have  been  undergoing  a  worsening  disease  in  his  later  days, 
this  its  last  melody  has  even  a  more  deeply  pathetic  interest  than 
belongs  to  the  theme. 

Take  finally,  as  still  further  test  of  Poe's  poetic  gift,  the  poems 
El  Dorado,  Annabel  Lee,  and  For  Annie.  The  first  is  a  brief  alle- 
gory, with  something  of  a  moral,  but  a  moral  too  pessimistic  to 
have  any  ethically  utilitarian  quality;  the  second  a  lovely  ballad 
enshrining  the  memory  of  his  married  life;  the  third  a  strange 
song,  impersonally  addressed  to  one  of  the  women  to  whom  he 
transiently  turned  in  his  lonesome  latter  years  —  a  wonderful 
lullaby  in  which  a  dead  man  is  made  placidly  to  exult  in  his  release 
from  life  and  pain,  and  in  the  single  remaining  thought  of  the 
presence  of  his  beloved.  In  these  poems  we  have  the  final  proof 
of  the  inborn  singing  faculty  of  Poe.  Some  of  his  pieces,  as  has 
been  already  admitted,  are  works  of  constructive  skill  rather  than 
outpourings  of  lyric  fulness ;  and  such  a  musical  stanza  as  this :  — 

"And  all  my  days  are  trances, 

And  all  my  nightly  dreams 
Are  where  thy  dark  eye  glances, 

And  where  thy  footstep  gleams  — 
In  what  ethereal  dances ! 

By  what  eternal  streams  !"  — 

has  perhaps  a  certain  stamp  of  compilation.  But  no  unprejudiced 
reader,  I  think,  will  fail  to  discern  in  the  three  poems  last  named 
a  quite  unsurpassable  limpidity  of  expression.  They  evolve  as  if 
of  their  own  accord.  In  El  Dorado  the  one  central  rhyme  is  reiter- 
ated with  a  perfect  simplicity;  Annabel  Lee  is  almost  careless  in  its 
childlike  directness  of  phrase;  and  For  Annie  is  almost  bald  in  its 
beginning.  But  I  know  little  in  the  way  of  easeful  word  music 
that  will  compare  with  this :  — 

"  And  oh  !  of  all  tortures 
That  torture  the  worst 
Has  abated  —  the  terrible 
Torture  of  thirst, 


152  JOHN   MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 

For  the  napthaline  river 

Of  Passion  accurst : 
I  have  drunk  of  a  water 

That  quenches  all  thirst : 

"  Of  a  water  that  flows, 

With  a  lullaln'  sound, 
From  a  spring  but  a  very  fev^r 

Feet  under  ground  — 
From  a  cavern  not  very  far 

Down  under  ground. 

"  And  ah  !   let  it  never 

Be  fooHshly  said 
That  my  room  it  is  gloomy, 

And  narrow  my  bed; 
For  man  never  slept 

In  a  different  bed ; 
And  to  sleep,  you  must  slumber 

In  just  such  a  bed. 

"  My  tantaHzed  spirit 

Here  blandly  reposes 
Forgetting,  or  never 

Regretting  its  roses  — 
Its  old  agitations 

Of  myrtles  and  roses: 

"For  now,  while  so  quietly 

Lying,  it  fancies 
A  holier  odour 

About  it,  of  pansies  — 
A  rosemary  odour 

Commingled  with  pansies  — 
With  nie  and  the  beautiful 

Puritan  pansies." 

Is  there  not  here  that  crowning  quality  of  emotional  plenitude 
which,  with  perfection  of  form,  makes  great  poetry  as  distinguished 
from  fine  verse:  are  there  not  here,  in  another  guise,  the  urgent 
throb  and  brooding  pregnancy  which  give  to  an  andante  of  Bee- 
thoven its  deep  constraining  power  ?  We  have  all  certain  passional 
or  sub-judicial  preferences  in  our  favourite  poetry,  setting  one 
masterpiece  above  others  for  some  subtle  magnetism  it  works  on 
us,  we  do  not  quite  know  how  or  why.  "Huysmans,"  says  a 
writer  of  ardently  eclectic  taste,  "goes  to  my  soul  like  a  gold  orna- 
ment of  Byzantine  workmanship."  ^     Somewhat  so  might  one  ex- 

'  Mr.  George  Moore,  Confessions  of  a  Young  Man,  p.  299. 


POE  153 

press  the  mastering  charm  of  those  incomparably  simple  yet  flaw- 
lessly rhythmical  lines. 

Ill 

These  few  extracts  are  enough  to  show  that  as  a  poet  Poe  has  a 
commanding  distinction;  but  if  we  find  him  remarkable  in  that 
regard,  what  shall  we  say  of  the  range  and  calibre  of  the  mind 
which  produced  the  manifold  achievement  of  his  prose  ?  The  more 
one  wanders  through  that,  out  of  all  comparison  the  more  extensive 
part  of  his  work,  the  more  singular  appear  those  estimates  of  the 
man  which  treat  him  merely  as  a  poet  of  unhappy  life  and  morbid 
imagination.  Perhaps  it  is  that  in  all  seriousness  the  literary 
world  inclines  to  Mr.  Swinburne's  conviction  that  poets  as  such  are 
the  guardian  angels  of  mankind,  and  all  other  mind-workers  their 
mere  satellites;  perhaps  that,  despite  Goethe's  services  to  biology, 
it  has  a  hereditary  difficulty  in  conceiving  a  poet  as  an  effective 
intelligence  in  any  other  walk  than  that  of  his  art,  and  accordingly 
excludes  instinctively  from  view  whatever  tends  to  raise  the  point. 
Or  is  it  that  the  sense  of  the  abnormality  of  feeling  in  Poe's  verse, 
and  in  his  best-known  stories,  gives  rise  to  a  vague  notion  that  his 
performances  in  the  line  of  normal  thought  can  be  of  no  serious 
account  ?  It  is  difficult  to  decide;  but  certain  it  is  that  most  of  his 
critics  have  either  by  restrictedness  of  view  or  positive  misjudg- 
ment  done  him  serious  wrong. 

It  is  Mr.  Henry  James  who,  in  a  passage  already  quoted  from, 
makes  the  remark:  "With  all  due  respect  to  the  very  original 
genius  of  the  author  of  the  Tales  of  Mystery,  it  seems  to  me  that 
to  take  him  with  more  than  a  certain  degree  of  seriousness  is  to 
lack  seriousness  oneself.  An  enthusiasm  for  Poe  is  the  mark  of 
a  decidedly  primitive  stage  of  reflection."  One  cannot  guess 
with  any  confidence  as  to  the  precise  "degree  of  seriousness" 
which  Mr.  James  would  concede;  or  how  much  seriousness  he 
brings  to  bear  on  any  of  his  own  attachments ;  or  what  the  stage 
of  reflection  was  at  which  he  cultivated  an  enthusiasm  for,  say, 
Theophile  Gautier.  One  therefore  hesitates  to  put  oneself  in 
competition  with  Mr.  James  in  the  matter  of  seriousness  of  char- 
9,cter.  But  one  may  venture  to  suggest  that  the  above  passage 
throws  some  light  on  the  rather  puzzUng  habit  of  depreciation 
of  Poe  among  American  men  of  letters.  Themselves  given 
mainly  to  the  study  of  modern  fiction,  they  seem  to  measure  Poe 


154  JOHN   MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 

only  as  a  fictionist;  and,  even  then,  instead  of  fairly  weighing 
his  work  on  its  merits,  they  test  it  by  the  calibre  of  the  people  who 
prefer  the  Tales  0}  Mystery  to  novels  of  character.  Remembering 
that  as  boys  they  enjoyed  Poe  when  they  did  not  enjoy  the  novel 
of  character,  they  decide  that  the  writer  who  thus  appeals  to 
boyish  minds  can  be  of  no  great  intellectual  account.  This  is  a 
very  fallacious  line  of  reasoning.  It  would  make  out  Defoe  to 
be  an  artist  of  the  smallest  account,  though  Mr.  James  has  a  way 
of  connecting  intellectual  triviality  with  "very  original  genius," 
which  somewhat  confuses  the  process  of  inference.  It  would 
relegate  Swift  to  a  rather  low  standing,  because  boys  notoriously 
enjoy  Giillivefs  Travels.  That  result  would  surely  not  do.  It 
surely  does  not  follow  that  Mr.  Stevenson  is  intellectually  inferior 
to  Mr.  Howells  because  the  former  wrote  Treasure  Island,  beloved 
of  boys,  while  Mr.  Howells's  books  appeal  only  to  people  who 
know  something  of  life.  The  fair,  not  to  say  the  scientific  method, 
surely,  is  to  take  an  author's  total  performance,  and  estimate 
from  that  his  total  powers.  This,  Mr.  James  has  not  done,  I 
think,  as  regards  Poe,  or  he  would  not  have  written  as  he  has 
done  about  "seriousness";  and,  if  one  may  say  such  a  thing 
without  impertinence,  the  kind  of  culture  specially  affected  by 
Mr.  James  is  too  much  in  the  ascendant  among  the  very  intelligent 
reading  public  of  the  States.  These  white-handed  students  of 
the  modern  novel  are  not  exactly  the  people  to  estimate  an  endow- 
ment such  as  Poe's.' 

If  one  critical  impression  can  be  said  to  be  predominant  for 
an  attentive  reader  of  Poe's  prose,  it  is  perhaps  a  wondering  sense 
of  the  perfection  which  may  belong  to  what  Lamb  called  "the 
sanity  of  true  genius,"  even  where  the  genius  borders  on  the  form- 
less clime  we  name  insanity.  This  is  no  idle  paradox.  What 
I  say  is  that  while  Poe's  work  again  and  again  gives  evidence  of 
a  mind  tending  to  alienation,  it  yet  includes  a  hundred  triumphs 
of  impeccable  reason ;  and  that  for  the  most  part  his  intellectual 
faculty  is  sanity  itself.  It  opens  up  a  curious  view  of  things  to 
compare  the  opaque,  lethargic,  chaotic  state  of  mind  which  in 
respectable  society  so  securely  passes  for  sanity,  with  the  pure 
electric  light,  the  cloudless  clearness,  of  Poe's  intelligence  in  its 

'  Mr.  Howells,  it  may  be  remembered,  has  followed  Mr.  James  in  speaking 
slightinRly  of  Poe;  and,  indeed,  the  general  current  of  American  criticism  is  still 
in  that  direction.  In  face  of  these  judgments,  which  dispose  not  only  of  perform- 
ance but  of  calibre,  one  is  driven  to  wonder  how  the  writers  estimate  their  own  total 
powers,  as  against  Poe's. 


POE  15s 

normal  state;  and  to  reflect  that  he  has  been  called  mad,  and  is 
sometimes  described  as  a  charlatan.  How  would  his  detractors, 
for  instance,  have  compared  with  Poe  in  thinking  power  if  they 
had  had  to  deal  with  such  a  problem  as  that  of  the  prima  facie 
credibility  of  the  "Moon  Hoax,"  which  Poe  is  falsely  accused  of 
imitating?  The  Moon  Hoax  was  a  celebrated  narrative,  the 
work  of  Mr.  Richard  Adams  Locke,  which  appeared  in  the  New 
York  Sun  some  three  weeks  ajter  Poe's  Hans  Pfaall  had  been 
published  in  the  Southern  Literary  Messenger,  and  which  made  a 
great  sensation  at  the  time.  The  Moon  Story  gravely  professed 
to  describe  the  inhabitants,  animals,  vegetation,  and  scenery  of 
the  moon,  as  having  been  lately  made  out  by  Sir  John  Herschel 
with  a  new  telescope ;  while  Poe  gave  a  minute  narrative,  touched 
at  points  with  banter,  of  a  balloon  journey  to  the  same  orb;  but 
there  was  little  detailed  resemblance  in  the  narratives,  and  Poe 
accepted  Mr.  Locke's  declaration  that  he  had  not  seen  the  Adven- 
ture when  he  concocted  his  hoax.  The  point  of  interest  for  us 
here  is  that  the  hoax  was  very  widely  successful;  and  that  Poe 
found  it  worth  while  afterwards  to  show  in  detail  how  obvious 
was  the  imposition,  and  how  easily  it  should  have  been  seen 
through  by  intelligent  readers.  "Not  one  person  in  ten,"  he 
records,  "discredited  it,  and  the  doubters  were  chiefly  those  who 
doubted  without  being  able  to  say  why  —  the  ignorant,  those 
uninformed  in  astronomy  —  people  who  would  not  believe  because 
the  thing  was  so  novel,  so  entirely  'out  of  the  usual  way.'  A  grave 
professor  of  mathematics  in  a  Virginian  college  told  me  seriously 
that  he  had  no  doubt  of  the  truth  of  the  whole  affair ! "  Accord- 
ingly, Poe  appended  to  his  Hans  Pfaall  story,  on  republishing  it, 
an  analysis  of  the  other  story,  than  which  there  could  not  be 
a  more  luminous  exercise  of  psychological  logic.  His  scientific 
and  other  knowledge,  and  his  power  of  scrutiny,  enabled  him  to 
detect  a  dozen  blunders  and  clumsinesses ;  but  perhaps  the  most 
characteristic  touch  is  his  remark  on  the  entire  absence  from  the 
narrative  of  any  expression  of  surprise  at  a  phenomenon  which, 
on  the  assumptions  made,  must  have  been  part  of  the  discoverer's 
vision  —  namely,  the  curious  appearance  presented  by  the  moon's 
alleged  inhabitants,  in  that  their  heads  would  be  towards  the 
terrestrial  gazer,  and  that  they  would  appear  to  hang  to  the  moon 
by  their  feet.  The  demand  for  an  expression  of  astonishment 
at  this  was  that  of  an  intelligence  which  had  carried  the  action 
of  imagination  to  a  high  pitch  of  methodic  perfection.     The  pro- 


156  JOHN  MACKINNON  ROBERTSON 

cesses  of  sub-conscious  inference  which  initiate  conviction,  the 
polarity  of  average  thinking,  the  elements  of  evidence,  all  had 
been  pondered  and  perceived  by  Poe  with  an  acumen  that  is  as 
singular  as  most  forms  of  genius.  And  the  result  of  the  demon- 
stration was  no  mere  protraction  of  subtle  introspection,  but  the 
masterly  solution  of  an  abstruse  concrete  problem.  His  facility  in 
the  explication  of  cypher- writing  was  astounding:  witness  his 
triumph  over  all  challengers  when  he  dealt  with  the  subject  in  a 
Philadelphia  journal  and  in  Graham's  Magazine;  his  unravelling 
of  a  cryptograph  in  which  were  employed  seven  alphabets,  with- 
out intervals  between  the  words  or  even  between  the  lines;  and 
his  crowning  conquest  of  a  cypher  so  elaborate  that  no  outsider 
succeeded  in  solving  it  with  the  key  when  Poe  offered  a  reward 
as  an  inducement.  Take,  again,  the  essay  on  "Maelzel's  Chess 
Player,"  in  which  he  bends  his  mind  on  the  question  whether  that 
v^^as  or  was  not  an  automaton ;  examines  with  an  eye  like  a  micro- 
scope the  features  of  the  object ;  passes  in  review  previous  attempts 
at  explanation;  and  evolves  with  rigorous  logic  an  irresistible 
demonstration  that  the  machine  was  worked  by  a  man,  and  of 
the  manner  of  the  working.  The  power  to  work  such  a  demon- 
stration is  as  rare,  as  remarkable,  as  almost  any  species  of  faculty 
that  can  be  named.  It  is  sanity  raised  to  a  higher  power.  Such 
performances,  to  say  nothing  of  his  prediction  of  the  plot  of  Bar- 
naby  Rudge  from  the  opening  chapters,  should  give  pause  to  those 
who  incline  to  the  view,  indorsed  by  some  respectable  critics, 
that  there  was  nothing  extraordinary  in  Poe's  feats  of  analytic 
fiction,  seeing  that  he  himself  tied  the  knots  he  untied.  But  that 
criticism  is  invalid  on  the  face  of  it.  Why  is  Poe  so  unrivalled 
in  his  peculiar  line  if  it  is  so  easy  to  tie  and  untie  complex  knots  of 
incident,  and  to  forge  chains  of  causation  in  narrative  ?  Does 
any  one  ever  dream  of  denying  skill  in  plot-construction  to  Scribe 
and  Sardou  because  they  deliberately  lead  up  to  their  denouements  ? 
Is  it  the  tyro  who  propounds  deep  problems  in  chess,  or  the  school- 
boy who  imagines  new  theorems  in  geometry?  The  matter  is 
hardly  worth  discussing.  That  the  author  of  The  Murders  in 
the  Rue  Morgue,  The  Adventure  of  Hans  Pjaall,  and  The  Mystery 
of  Marie  Rogct  could  be  a  mere  intellectual  charlatan,  differing 
only  from  his  fellows  in  power  of  make-believe,  is  what  De  Quin- 
cey  would  call  a  "fierce  impossibility." 

As  a  narrator  and  as  a  thinker  Poe  has  half  a  dozen  excellences 
any  one  of  which  would  entitle  him  to  fame.     The  general  mind 


POE 


157 


of  Europe  has  been  fascinated  by  his  tales;  but  how  far  has  it 
realized  the  quality  of  the  work  in  them?  It  has  for  the  most 
part  read  Poe  as  it  has  read  Alexandre  Dumas.  Poe,  indeed, 
wrote  to  interest  the  reading  pulDlic,  and  he  was  far  too  capable 
an  artist  not  to  manage  what  he  wanted;  but  it  was  not  in  his 
nature  to  produce  work  merely  adequate  to  the  popular  demand. 
Hundreds  of  popular  stories  are  produced  and  are  forgotten,  for 
the  plain  reason  that  while  the  writer  has  somehow  succeeded 
in  interesting  a  number  of  his  contemporaries,  his  work  lacks  the 
intellectual  salt  necessary  for  its  preservation  to  future  times. 
Posterity  reads  it  and  finds  nothing  to  respect;  neither  mastery 
of  style  nor  subtlety  nor  closeness  of  thought.  But  Poe's  best 
stories  have  a  quality  of  pure  mind,  an  intensity  of  intelligized 
imagination,  that  seems  likely  to  impress  men  centuries  hence 
as  much  as  it  did  his  more  competent  readers  in  his  own  day. 
Even  at  the  present  moment,  when  his  genre  is  almost  entirely 
uncultivated,  such  a  hard-headed  critic  as  Professor  Minto  sums 
up  that  "there  are  few  English  writers  of  this  century  whose 
fame  is  likely  to  be  more  enduring.  The  feelings  to  which  he 
appeals  are  simple  but  universal,  and  he  appeals  to  them  with 
a  force  that  has  never  been  surpassed."  To  that  generously 
just  verdict  I  am  disposed,  however,  to  offer  a  partial  demurrer, 
in  the  shape  of  a  suggestion  that  it  is  not  so  much  in  the  univer- 
sality of  the  "feelings"  to  which  he  appeals  as  in  the  manifest 
and  consummate  faculty  with  which  he  is  seen  to  frame  his  appeal, 
that  Poe's  security  of  renown  really  lies.  Doubtless  many  readers 
will,  as  hitherto,  see  the  narrative  and  that  only;  just  as  Poe 
himself  points  out  that  "not  one  person  in  ten  —  nay,  not  one 
person  in  five  hundred  —  has,  during  the  perusal  of  Robinson 
Crusoe,  the  most  remote  conception  that  any  particle  of  genius, 
or  even  of  common  talent,  has  been  employed  in  its  creation. 
Men  do  not  look  upon  it  in  the  light  of  a  literary  performance." 
But  one  fancies  that  the  age  of  critical  reading  is  evolving,  in  which, 
notwithstanding  a  random  saying  of  Poe's  own  to  the  contrary, 
men  will  combine  delight  in  the  artist's  skill  with  due  suscepti- 
bility to  the  result. 

Even  among  those  who  perceive  the  immense  importance  of 
naturalism  in  fiction,  there  are,  it  is  to  be  feared,  some  who  are 
so  narrow  as  to  see  no  value  in  any  work  of  which  the  naturalism 
is  not  that  species  of  absolute  realism  that,  selection  apart,  is 
substantially  contended  for  by  M.  Zola,  and  is  variously  exempli- 


158  JOHN   MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 

fied  in  his  and  other  modern  novels  of  different  countries  and 
correspondingly  different  flavours.  Now,  the  effective  vindication 
of  Poe,  to  my  mind,  is  that,  weird  and  bizarre  and  abnormal  as 
are  the  themes  he  affected,  he  is  essentially  a  realist  in  his  method. 
Granted  that  he  turns  away  from  experience,  ordinary  or  other- 
wise, for  his  subjects,  what  could  be  more  perfect  than  the  cir- 
cumspection with  which  he  uses  every  device  of  arrangement 
and  tone,  of  omission  and  suggestion,  to  give  his  fiction  the  air 
of  actuality?  Take  his  Hans  Pjaall.  Hardly  any  critic,  save 
Dr.  Landa  in  his  preface  to  his  Spanish  translation  of  some  of 
the  tales,  has  done  justice  to  the  exactitude  and  verisimilitude 
with  which  Poe  has  there  touched  in  his  astronomical,  physical, 
and  physiological  details;  and  employed  them  to  the  point  of 
carrying  illusion  to  its  possible  limit  even  while  he  has  artistically 
guarded  himself  from  the  downright  pretence  by  the  fantastic 
fashion  of  his  introduction.  There  is  realism  and  reaUsm.  It 
was  Poe's  idiosyncrasy  as  a  fictionist  to  examine,  not  the  inter- 
play of  the  primary  human  and  social  emotions  either  in  the  open 
or  in  half  lights,  not  to  be  either  a  Thackeray  or  a  Hawthorne, 
but  to  trace  the  sequences  and  action  of  the  thinking  faculty  in 
its  relation  to  the  leading  instincts  and  feelings  of  the  individual; 
and  this  he  does  partly  by  studying  himself  and  partly  by  com- 
paring himself  with  others  —  precisely  the  method  of  ordinary 
humanist  fiction.  He  is  always  an  observer  in  this  direction. 
His  objection  to  the  "Moon  Hoax"  was  that  it  not  merely  showed 
ignorant  blundering  in  its  details  but  was  wanting  in  proper  calcu- 
lation of  the  attitude  of  good  observers;  so  in  his  paper  on  "Mael- 
zel's  Chess  Player"  he  unhesitatingly  rejects  one  of  Brewster's 
explanations  as  assuming  too  commonplace  a  stratagem ;  so,  in 
easily  unravelling  a  friend's  cypher,  he  laughs  at  the  "shallow 
artifice"  he  sees  in  it;  and  so  in  his  Parisian  stories  he  derides, 
in  the  police  officer,  the  cunning  which  he  finds  so  inferior  to 
true   sagacity. 

Even  the  story  of  The  Black  Cat  is  realistic  —  realistic  in  the 
very  wildness  of  its  action.  Any  one  in  reading  Poe  can  see  how 
he  consciously  constructed  tales  by  letting  his  creative  faculty 
follow  the  line  of  one  of  those  morbid  fancies  that  probably  in 
some  degree  occur  at  times  to  all  of  us,  and  of  which,  alas  !  he  must 
have  had  a  tremendous  share;  giving  the  recapitulation  a  grue- 
some lifclikcness  by  vigilant  embodiment  of  the  details  he  had 
noted  in  following  the  track  of  the  sinister  caprice.     And  so  The 


?0R  159 

Tell-Tale  Heart,  and  William  Wilson,  and  The  Cask  0}  Amon- 
tillado are  realistic  —  realistic  in  the  sense  that  they  have  had  a 
psychologic  basis  in  the  perversities  of  a  disturbed  imagination: 
hence  the  uncanny  fascination  of  these  and  other  stories  of  his  in 
a  similar  taste. ^     Whether  that  particular  species  of  fiction  will 
retain  a  hold  on  men  is  a  matter  on  which  it  would  be  rash  to 
prophesy;    and  indeed  it  may  be  that  not  only  this  but  another 
class  of  Poe's  productions  —  that  which  includes  The  Fall  0}  the 
House  of  Usher,  Ligeia,  The  Masque  of  the  Red  Death,  The  As- 
signation, and  Berenice  —  may,  as  mankind  progresses  in  rational 
culture,  lose  that  peculiar  impressiveness  they  have  for  so  many 
readers   to-day.     These    strange    creations,    whelmed   in    shade, 
seem  to  belong  to  some  wild  region,  out  of  the  main  road  of  human 
evolution.     To  my  own  taste,  I  confess,  they  are  less  decisively 
and  permanently  impressive  than  such  feats  of  daylight  imagina- 
tion, so  to  speak,  as  Arthur  Gordon  Pym,  Hans  Pjaall,  The  Pit 
and  the  Pendulum,  or  even  The  Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue,  and 
The  Purloined  Letter;    but  there  is  no  overlooking  the  element 
of  power,  the  intension  of  idea,  which  makes  itself  felt  in  the  twi- 
light studies  as  in  the  others.     Like  every  man  who  has  to  live 
by  steady  pen-work,  Poe  produced  some  inferior  stuff  and  some 
downright  trash ;   but  wherever  his  faculty  comes  at  all  fully  into 
play  it  puts  a  unique  stamp  of  intellect  on  its  product,  a  stamp 
not  consisting  in  mere  force  of  beauty  or  style,  though  these  are 
involved,  but  in  a  steady,  unfaltering  pressure  of  the  writer's 
thought  on  the  attention  of  his  reader.     And  when  we  recognize 
this  pregnancy  and  intensity,  and  take  note  that  such  a  critic  as 
Mr.  Lowell  was  so  impressed  by  the  "serene  and  sombre  beauty" 
of  The  Fall  0}  the  House  of  Usher  as  to  pronounce  it  sufficient 
by  itself  to  prove  Poe  a  man  of  genius  and  the  master  of  a  classic 
style,  we  shall  see  cause  to  doubt  whether  any  considerable  portion 
of  Poe's  imaginative  work  belongs  to  the  perishable  order  of 
literature. 

As  for  the  group  of  tales  of  the  saner  type,  with  their  blazing 
vividness  and  tense  compactness  of  substance  —  beyond  insisting 
on  the  importance  of  the  capacity  imphed  in  these  results,  and 
the  essential  realism  of  the  stories  within  the  Umits  of  their  species, 
there  can  be  little  need  to  claim  for  them  either  attention  or  praise. 

>  See  the  Saturday  Review  of  November  28,  1885,  for  a  well-expressed  critirism 
to  the  same  effect,  published  a  few  weeks  after  the  foregoing,  but  doubtless  by  a 
writer  who  had  never  seen  that.    Cp.  Hennequin,  Ecrivains  Francises,  pp.  120-130. 


l6o  JOHN   MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 

Their  fascination  as  narratives  is  felt  by  all:    the  only  drawback 
is  the  tendency  to  argue  that,  because  the  non-realistic  novel  is 
potentially  inferior  to  the  realistic,  this  class  of  story  is  inferior 
to  the  realistic  novel  or  story  of  ordinary  life.     To  reason  so  is 
to  confuse  types.     Lytton  is  a  worse  novelist  than  Thackeray 
because,  professing  both  explicitly  and  implicitly  to  portray  char- 
acter and  society,  he  is  less  true  in  every  respect ;  and  the  idealistic 
element  in  George  Eliot  is  of  less  value  than  her  work  of  observa- 
tion because  it  claims  acceptance  on  the  same  footing  while  its 
title  is,  in  the  terms  of  the  case,  awanting.     Here  we  are  dealing 
with  comparable  things,  with  performances  to  be  judged  in  rela- 
tion to  each  other.     But  in  Poe  we  deal  with  quite  a  different 
species  of  art.     That  familiar  objection  to  his  tales  on  the  score 
of  their  lack  of  human  or  moral  colour,  expressed  by  Mr.  Lowell, 
in  his  Fahle  for  Critics,  in  the  phrase  "somehow  the  heart  seems 
squeezed  out  by  the  mind,"  is  the  extension  of  the  confusion  into 
downright  injustice.     It  lies  on  the  face  of  his  work  that  Poe 
never  aims  at  reproducing  every-day  life  and  society,  with  its 
multitude   of  minute  character-phenomena  forming  wholes   for 
artistic  contemplation,   but  —  to  put  it   formally  —  at  working 
out  certain  applications  and  phases  of  the  faculties  of  reflection 
and  volition,  as  conditioning  and  conditioned  by  abnormal  ten- 
dencies and  incidents.     He  does  not  seek  or  profess  to  draw 
"character"  in  the  sense  in  which  Dickens  or  Balzac  does;    he 
has  almost  nothing  to  do  with  local  colour  or  sub-divisions  of 
type;   his  fisherman  in  The  Descent  into  the  Maelstrom  is  an  un- 
specialized  intelligent  person;    Arthur  Gordon  Pym  similarly  is 
simply  an  observing,  reasoning,  and  energizing  individual  who 
goes  through  and  notes  certain  experiences:  in  short,  these  person- 
ages are  abstractions  of  one  aspect  of  Poe.*     On  the  other  hand. 
Usher  and  the  speakers  in  The  Black  Cat  and  The  hup  of  the 
Perverse  merely  represent  a  reversal  of  the  formula;    peculiar 
idiosyncrasy  in  their  case  being  made  the  basis  of  incident,  whereas 
in  the  others  pure  incident  or  mystery  was  made  the  motive.     No 
matter  which  element  predominates,  normal  character  study  is 
e.xcluded;    Poe's  bias,  as  we  said,  being  toward  analysis  or  syn- 
thesis of  processes  of  applied  reason  and  psychal  idiosyncrasy, 
not  to  reproduction  of  the  light  and  shade  of  life  pitched  on  the 

>  The  unfinished  Journal  of  Julius  Rodman  (pul)Hshed  in  Mr.  Ingram's  edition 
de  luxe  of  the  talcs  and  poems)  presents  us  with  a  somewhat  more  individuali^ed 
type,  but  there  too  the  interest  centres  in  the  incidents. 


FOE  l6l 

everyday  plane.  It  was  not  that  he  was  without  eye  for  that. 
On  the  contrary,  his  criticisms  show  he  had  a  sound  taste  in  the 
novel  proper;  and  we  find  him  rather  critically  alert  than  other- 
wise in  his  social  relation  to  the  personalities  about  him.  It  was 
that  his  artistic  bent  lay  in  another  direction. 

As  a  tale-teller,  then,  he  is  to  be  summed  up  as  having  worked  in 
his  special  line  with  the  same  extraordinary  creative  energy  and 
intellectual  mastery  as  distinguish  his  verse ;  giving  us  narratives 
"of  imagination  all  compact,"  yet  instinct  with  life  in  every  detail 
and  particle,  no  matter  how  strange,  how  aloof  from  common 
things,  may  be  the  theme.  As  Dr.  Landa  remarks,  he  has  been 
the  first  story-writer  to  exploit  the  field  of  science  in  the  depart- 
ment of  the  marvellous ;  and  he  has  further  been  the  first  to  exploit 
the  marvellous  in  morbid  psychology  with  scientific  art.  These 
are  achievements  as  commanding,  as  significant  of  genius,  as  the 
most  distinguished  success  in  any  of  the  commoner  walks  of  fiction ; 
and  a  contrary  view  is  reasonably  to  be  described  as  a  fanatical 
development  of  an  artistic  doctrine  perfectly  sound  and  of  vital 
importance  in  its  right  application,  but  liable,  like  other  cults, 
to  incur  reaction  when  carried  to  extremes.  After  The  Idiot 
Boy  and  The  Prelude  came  The  Lady  of  Shalott  and  the  Idylls 
of  the  King;  after  Trollope  came  King  Romance  again;  and 
even  if  Poe  were  eclipsed  for  a  time,  posterity  would  still  be  to 
reckon  with. 

IV 

There  is  still  to  be  considered,  if  we  would  measure  Poe  com- 
pletely, his  work  in  the  fields  of  abstract  aesthetics,  criticism,  and 
philosophy;  and  to  some  of  us  that  aspect  of  him  is  not  less  re- 
markable than  his  artistic  expression  of  himself  in  verse  and 
fiction.  Even  among  his  admirers,  however,  this  is  not  the  pre- 
vailing attitude.  Thus  Mr.  Ingram,  to  whose  untiring  and  devoted 
labour  is  mainly  due  the  vindication  of  Poe's  memory,  considers 
that  criticism  was  "hardly  his  forte";  and  Dr.  William  Hand 
Browne,  who,  in  his  article  in  the  Baltimore  New  Eclectic  Maga- 
zine on  "Poe's  Eureka  and  Recent  Scientific  Speculations,"  has 
been  the  first  bearer  of  testimony  to  the  poet's  capacity  as  a  thinker 
—  even  this  independent  eulogist  thinks  it  necessary  to  declare 
that  in  Poe's  Rationale  oj  Verse,  "in  connection  with  just  and 
original  remarks  on  English  versification,   of  which   he  was  a 

M 


l62  JOHN   MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 

master,  we  find  a  tissue  of  the  merest  absurdity  about  the  classical 
measures,  of  which  he  knew  nothing."  I  cannot  agree  to  the 
implications  of  Mr.  Ingram's  phrase,  and  I  cannot  but  think 
that  Dr.  Browne  has  spoken  recklessly  as  to  Poe's  knowledge 
and  criticism  of  the  so-called  "classical  measures,"  treating  that 
question  very  much  as  other  critics  have  treated  the  Eureka. 
That  Poe  in  his  school  days  was  a  good  Latinist  we  know  from 
one  of  his  schoolfellows,  who  dwells  especially  on  the  delight  with 
which  he  used  to  listen  to  Poe's  conning  of  his  favourite  pieces  in 
Horace. 

The  school  in  question  was  strong  on  the  Latin  side,  and  it  is 
hardly  possible  that  Poe,  whatever  he  might  do  in  Greek,  could  be 
otherwise  than  familiar  with  the  orthodox  scansions  of  the  classic 
poets,  ranking,  as  he  did,  as  joint  dux  of  the  school.^  In  point  of 
fact,  he  won  distinctions  in  both  Latin  and  French  at  the  Univer- 
sity of  Virginia,  which  must  surely  count  for  something. 

It  requires,  indeed,  little  scholarship  to  gather  from  the  ordinary 
editions  the  received  metres  of  Horace  and  the  established  scansions 
of  the  hexameter,  which  are  what  Poe  puts  in  evidence  in  so  far  as 
he  challenges  the  academic  theory  of  classic  verse.  These  are 
given  with  strict  accuracy.  The  whole  question  raised  is  whether 
they  stand  by  a  scientific  or  by  a  merely  traditional  authority;  and 
it  is  surely  a  device  worthy  of  a  mediaeval  schoolman  to  evade  the 
inquiry  by  a  sweeping  charge  of  ignorance.^ 

In  just  this  supercilious  fashion  have  avowedly  unfriendly  critics 

1  That  Poe's  general  culture  was  wide  and  efifective  it  seems  unnecessan-  to  con- 
tend here,  though  some  of  his  critics  deny  him  such  credit.  His  works  must  speak, 
for  themselves.  It  has  indeed  been  pointed  out  by  one  critic  that  the  nature  of  his 
reference  to  Cresset's  Ver-  Vert,  in  The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher,  shows  him  to 
have  used  the  title  without  knowing  the  poem;  and  Mrs.  Whitman's  merely 
forensic  rejoinder  only  shows  that  she  had  not  read  it  either.  I  fancy  he  may  have 
dipped  into  the  poeni  and  noticed  such  a  phrase  as  "le  saint  oiseau"  or  the  con- 
cluding lines,  and  so  entirely  missed  the  nature  of  the  narrative.  His  ".stately 
raven  of  the  saintly  days  of  yore"  suggests  the  same  chance.  But  one  such  mis- 
carriage, whatever  be  the  e.xplanation,  cannot  destroy  the  general  testimony  of 
his  so  various  writings. 

2  The  late  Sidnev  Lanier  wrote  that  "the  trouble  with  Poe  was,  he  did  not  know 
enough.  He  needed  to  know  a  good  many  more  things  in  order  to  be  a  great  poet." 
Alas,  that  is  the  trouble  with  all  of  us,  small  and  great;  and  in  more  ways  than  one, 
in  the  subtler  sense  rather  than  in  the  simpler,  it  holds  true  of  Lanier  himself,  to 
the  point  of  the  statement  that  he  fell  ever  further  short  of  being  a  great  poet  in  the 
ratio  of  the  growth  of  his  conviction  that  he  was  one,  and  that  his  poetry  was  an 
e.xpression  of  knowledge.  Man  of  genius  as  he  was,  he  did  not  finally  succeed 
even  in  fulfilling  his  own  law  of  severance  between  Art  and  Cleverness.  Poe  re- 
mains the  greater  poet  because  he  knew  better  the  function  of  poetry  and  its  relation 
to  truth. 


FOE  163 

disparaged  Poe  on  other  grounds,  passing  judgment  without 
offering  a  jot  of  evidence.  One  is  led  to  suspect  that,  while  think- 
ing for  himself  on  science.  Dr.  Browne  treated  questions  of  classic 
metre  with  the  unquestioning  faith  which  other  people  give  to  the 
propositions  of  religion.  Those  who  have  looked  with  independent 
interest  into  the  dogmas  of  classic  prosody  know  that,  whether 
right  or  wrong,  Poe  was  dealing  with  a  subject  on  which  even  re- 
putedly "orthodox"  opinion  is  hopelessly  confused;  and  that  the 
off-hand  language  of  Dr.  Browne  pretends  a  certainty  of  expert 
authority  which  does  not  exist.  Certain  rules  for  scanning  Greek 
and  Latin  verse  pass  current ;  but  save  in  respect  of  nominal  ad- 
herence to  the  arbitrary  rules  of  a  given  text-book,  there  is  no  agree- 
ment among  scholars ;  and  it  is  safe  to  say  that  the  traditional  lore 
of  the  schools  is  a  mass  of  uncomprehended  shibboleths,  framed 
without  understanding  and  accepted  on  the  same  basis.  Poe  must 
have  heard  at  school  and  university  the  ordinary  directions  for  the 
scanning  of  classic  verse.  He  was  singular  enough  to  think  them 
out  for  his  own  satisfaction,  and  he  thus  found  there  was  no  satis- 
faction to  be  had  from  them. 

What  Poe  urged  on  that  head  is,  I  venture  to  think,  broadly 
just  and  well-timed.  As  he  truly  said,  "there  is  something  in 
'scholarship'  which  seduces  us  into  bhnd  worship  of  Bacon's  Idol 
of  the  Theatre  —  into  irrational  deference  to  antiquity; "  ^  and  as  a 
matter  of  fact  the  prosody  of  the  schools  had  never  any  better 
basis  than  one  of  Talmudic  deduction  from  verse  never  scientifically 
studied.  The  Iliad,  as  Poe  again  says,  "being  taken  as  a  starting- 
point,  was  made  to  stand  instead  of  Nature  and  common  sense. 
Upon  this  poem,  in  place  of  facts  and  deduction  from  fact,  or  from 
natural  law,  were  built  systems  of  feet,  metres,  rhythms,  rules  — 
rules  that  contradict  each  other  every  five  minutes,  and  for  nearly 
all  of  which  there  may  be  found  nearly  twice  as  many  exceptions 
as  examples."  The  notorious  want  of  hearty  enjoyment  of  ancient 
verse,  qiid  verse,  among  those  who  study  it,  and  the  naked  and 
unashamed  unnaturalness  of  our  own  enunciation  of  it,  are  suffi- 
cient to  support  Poe's  protest  against  any  mere  dogmatic  retort 
from  the  pedants;  and  I  apprehend  that  no  open-minded  reader 
of  his  essay  will  have  any  difficulty  in  deciding  whether  the  analytic 
poet  or  the  ordinary  scholastic  is  the  better  fitted  to  arrive  at  what 

'  In  this  connection  note  the  recent  challenge  to  the  traditionist  grammarians 
by  Mr.  Gavin  Hamilton  in  his  treatise  on  the  Subjunctive.  Edinburgh:  Oliver 
and  Boyd,  1889. 


l64  JOHN  MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 

the  principles  of  rhythm  really  are.  Poe  seems  to  have  had  the 
eccentric  taste  to  try  to  enjoy  his  Horace  as  he  enjoyed  his  Tenny- 
son. But  to  say  this  is  to  say  that  he  undertook  an  almost  hope- 
lessly difficult  task,  and  it  would  be  going  too  far  to  say  that  he  has 
succeeded  as  he  thought  he  did.  A  full  examination  of  the  matter 
must  be  left  to  an  appendix;  but  it  may  here  be  said  that  in  the 
very  act  of  coming  to  the  conclusion  that  Poe's  simplified  system  of 
feet  in  turn  breaks  down  like  the  old  and  complex  one  as  an 
anatomy  of  verse,  we  are  led  to  acknowledge  anew  the  singular 
originality  and  energy  of  his  mind.  It  is  no  extravagance  to  say 
that  in  this  matter  it  is  better  to  err  with  Poe  than  to  be  "right" 
with  Dr.  Browne,  for  Poe's  error  is  a  brilliant  effort  to  make  a  new 
system  out  of  the  wreck  of  one  which  he  has  rightly  discarded,  and 
he  offers  vivid  argumentative  exposition  where  academic  ortho- 
doxy offers  inert  and  unreasoned  rules.  In  every  respect  save  the 
crowning  point  of  scientific  rightness  it  is  a  masterly  critical  per- 
formance.^ 


The  close  of  the  Rationale  raises  a  question  which  has  been 
generally  decided  against  Poe  —  that  as  to  whether  he  had  any 
humour.  Humour  of  the  kind  in  which  American  literature  is 
specially  rich  he  clearly  had  not.  Such  attempts  as  his  X-ing 
a  Paragrab  have  none  of  the  hilarious  fun  of  those  grotesque 
exaggerations  which  form  one  of  the  two  main  features  of  Ameri- 
can humour;  and  of  its  other  constituent  of  subtle,  kindly  drollery, 
unembittered  jesting  at  the  incongruous  in  morals  or  in  incidents, 
he  can  offer  us  almost  as  little.  The  explanation  is  that  in  respect 
of  temperament  he  was  too  unhappily  related  to  American  society 
to  have  any  cordial  satisfaction  in  studying  it ;  and  that  his  sense 
of  the  comic  had  the  warmthlessness  and  colourlessness  of  un- 
mitigated  reason.      One   sometimes   finds   him   even   pungently 

*  Mr.  Stedman,  in  editino;  the  recent  complete  edition  of  Poe's  works,  has  seen 
fit  to  say  that  "the  Ralionale  of  Verse,  is  a  curious  discussion  of  mechanics  now  well 
enough  understood"  (Introd.  to  Vol.  VI.,  p.  xiv).  As  very  few  of  us  are  conscious 
of  Mr.  Stedman's  sense  of  mastery,  which  he  does  not  give  us  the  means  of  sharing, 
I  leave  my  Appcndi.\on  Accent,  Quantity,  and  Feel  toc.xhit)it  other  people's  difficul- 
ties. And  when  Mr.  Stedman  further  pronounces  (p.  xv)  that  "one  can  rarelv 
draw  a  better  contrast  between  the  faulty  and  the  masterly  treatment  of  a  literary 
topic  than  by  citing  The  Ralionale  of  Verse  and  [Arnold's]  three  lectures  On  Trans- 
lating Homer,"  I  must  take  leave  to  say  that  he  does  but  give  us  an  uncritical  in- 
dorsement of  a  prestige.     Arnold's  book  is  really  a  failure  as  a  technical  treatise. 


FOE  165 

humorous,  but  it  is  always  in  a  generalization,  or  in  derision  of 
a  fallacy  or  a  fatuity;  always  in  a  flash  of  the  reason,  never  in  a 
twinkle  of  the  temperament;  and  only  those  who  are  capable  of 
what  George  Eliot  once  delightedly  spoke  of  as  the  laughter  which 
comes  of  a  satisfaction  of  the  understanding,  will  perceive  that  he 
possesses  humour  at  all.  His  satire,  indeed,  is  strictly  in  keeping 
with  his  criticism  in  general!  The  peculiar  quality  of  that,  which 
for  some  readers  makes  it  unsuccessful,  lies  in  this  absolute  su- 
premacy of  judgment.  The  apparent  or  rather  the  virtual  ruth- 
lessness  of  much  of  his  critical  writing  is  the  outcome  of  the  two 
facts  that  he  had  an  extremelv  keen  critical  sense  and  that,  in 
applying  it,  save  when  his  emotional  side  was  stimulated,  as  it 
generally  was  when  he  was  criticising  women, ^  he  was  sheer,  im- 
placable intellect.  To  him  the  discrimination  of  good  and  bad  in 
literature  was  a  matter  of  the  intensest  seriousness :  of  the  faculty 
for  doing  mere  "notices"  of  the  mechanically  inept  and  insincere 
sort  turned  out  by  so  many  of  the  criticasters  who  moralize  about 
his  lack  of  the  moral  sense  —  of  that  convenient  aptitude  he  was 
quite  destitute.  To  represent  him,  however,  in  the  way  Mr. 
Stoddard  does,  as  a  kind  of  literary  Red  Indian,  delighting  in  the 
use  of  the  tomahawk  for  its  own  sake,  is  but  to  add  to  the  darkening 
of  critical  counsel  about  Poe.  The  prejudiced  critic  in  question 
speaks  as  follows :  — 

"Like  lago,  he  was  nothing  if  not  critical,  and  the  motto  of  his  self- 
sufficient  spirit  was  Nil  admirari.  ...  It  is  a  weakness  incident  to  youth 
and  ambition.  ...  I  do  not  think  that  Poe  ever  outgrew  it,  or  sought  to 
outgrow  it.  He  believed  that  his  readers  loved  havoc;  Mr.  Burton,  on  the 
contrary,  believed  that  they  loved  justice.  And  he  was  right,  as  the  criti- 
cisms of  Poe  have  proved,  for  they  have  failed  to  commend  themselves  to  the 
good  sense  of  his  countrymen.  His  narrow  but  acute  mind  enabled  him  to 
detect  the  verbal  faults  of  those  whom  he  criticised,  but  it  disqualified  him 
from  perceiving  their  mental  qualities.  He  mastered  the  letter,  but  the 
spirit  escaped  him.  He  advanced  no  critical  principle  which  he  established; 
he  attacked  no  critical  principle  which  he  overthrew.  He  broke  a  few 
butterflies  on  his  wheel ;  but  he  destroyed  no  reputation.  He  was  a  powerless 
iconoclast."  ' 

I  quote  this  as  the  most  close-packed,  comprehensive,  and  con- 
sistent piece  of  aggressively  bad  criticism  by  a  not  incompetent 

*  See  Mr.  Stoddard's  memoir  in  Widdleton's  edition  of  Poe,  p.  165.  "I  cannot 
point  an  arrow  against  any  woman,"  was  one  of  Poe's  private  avowals.  Still,  he 
wrote  contemptuously  of  Margaret  Fuller,  whom  he  disliked  on  both  personal  and 
literary  grounds,  as  did  Mr.  Lowell. 

^  Memoir  in  Widdleton's  ed.,  p.  89. 


1 66  JOHN   MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 

critic  that  I  remember  to  have  seen.  From  the  mahcious,  not  to  say 
malignant,  "Like  lago"  to  the  overstrained  depreciation  of  the 
"powerless  iconoclast,"  all  is  unfair  and  untrue.  The  remark 
about  "havoc"  and  Mr.  Burton  refers  to  a  jesting  answer  made  by 
Mr.  Poe  to  one  of  his  employers  who  deprecated  his  severity;  an 
answer  which  to  take  as  an  e.xpression  of  Poe's  critical  creed  is 
discreditably  unjust.  He  thought  the  severity  complained  of  was 
deserved,  and  he  merely  made  the  light  answer  by  way  of  soothing 
the  uneasiness  or  silencing  the  objections  of  an  employer  for  whose 
judgment  he  had  no  respect.  To  take  seriously  a  phrase  so  uttered 
is  to  show  either  moral  pedantry  or  prejudice.  As  to  the  view  taken 
of  Poe  as  a  critic  by  the  "good  sense"  of  his  countrymen,  that  must 
be  left  to  the  decision  of  the  tribunal  in  question,  if  it  can  be  got  at; 
and  the  proposition  that  Poe's  mind  was  narrow  may  be  profitably 
left  alone ;  while  the  other  dicta  may  be  best  disposed  of  by  laying 
down  truer  ones. 

What  may  fairly  be  said  against  Poe's  criticisms  is  that  they  have 
not  the  absolute  artistic  balance  and  completeness,  the  perfection 
of  "form"  which  belongs  to  his  tales  and  best  poems.  Criticism 
was  not  with  him,  as  it  has  been  said  to  be  with  Mr.  Lowell  and 
Mr.  Arnold,  a  ' '  fine  art " ;  it  was  rather  a  science ;  and  his  critiques 
accordingly  are  processes  of  scientific  analysis  and  summing-up, 
almost  always  restricted  in  a  businesslike  manner  to  the  subject  in 
hand.  What  he  might  have  done  if  he  had  had  the  opportunities 
of  the  two  writers  named,  if  he  had  had  academic  leisure  and  good 
media,  is  a  matter  for  speculation ;  but  what  we  do  know  is  that  he 
has  left  a  body  of  widely  various  criticism  which,  as  such,  will  better 
stand  critical  examination  to-day  than  any  similar  work  produced 
in  England  or  America  in  his  time.  Mr.  James,  half-sharing  the 
normal  American  hostility  to  Poe,  thinks  that  his  critical  product 
"is  probably  the  most  complete  specimen  of  provincialism  ever 
prepared  for  the  edification  of  men";  though  he  admits  that  there 
is  mixed  in  it  a  great  deal  of  sense  and  discrimination;  and  that 
"here  and  there,  sometimes  at  frequent  intervals  {sic),  we  find  a 
phrase  of  happy  insight  embedded  in  a  patch  of  the  most  fatuous 
pedantry."^  Well,  provincialism  is  a  very  incalculable  thing: 
so  Protean  and  subtle  that  some  people  find  some  of  the  essence  of 
it  actually  in  the  very  full-blown  cosmopolitanism  of  Mr.  James, 
whose  delicate  narrative  art  is  so  much  occupied  with  the  delinea- 
tion of  aspects  of  the  life  of  idle  Americans  in  Europe  and  idle 

'  Hau'tfwrne,  p.  64. 


POE  167 

Europeans  in  America,  and  so  admirably  detached  from  all  grosser 
things.  Putting  that  out  of  the  question,  and  assuming  that  Mr. 
James  is  as  qualified  a  critic  of  criticism  in  general  as  he  has  un- 
doubtedly proved  himself  to  be  of  the  novel,  we  must  in  any  case 
hold  that  he  did  not  sufficiently  consider  the  general  conditions  of 
criticism  in  Poe's  day  when  he  penned  his  aspersion.  When  we 
remember  how  matters  stood  in  England,  with  Christopher  North 
and  the  youthful  Thackeray  and  Macaulay  and  the  Quarterlies 
representing  the  critical  spirit ;  ^  when  we  note  how  Carlyle,  study- 
ing Blackwood  and  Frazer  in  those  days,  decides  that  "the  grand 
requisite  seems  to  be  impudence,  and  a  fearless  committing  of  your- 
self to  talk  in  your  drink  " ;  and  when  we  try  to  reckon  up  what  of 
insight  and  real  breadth  of  view  there  was  in  all  these,  we  shall 
find  it  difficult  to  accept  Mr.  James's  standard.  Provincialism  is 
a  matter  of  comparison.  If  it  be  decided  that  to  deal  as  minutely 
as  Poe  did  with  the  contemporary  literature  and  waiters  of  one's 
own  country  is  unwise,  the  provincialism  of  the  proceeding  will 
still  be  to  prove;  and  in  the  end  a  number  of  things  in  Poe's 
critical  remains  go  some  way  to  explode  the  detractions  we  have 
been  considering.  Particular  judgments  apart,  there  is  a  general 
pressure  of  reasoning  power  in  his  critical  writing  which  is  really 
not  to  be  found  in  the  works  of  later  men,  English  and  American, 
whose  title  is  taken  for  granted  by  some  of  those  who  make  light 
of  Poe  on  this  side.  The  reasoning  of  Mr.  Lowell,  outside  of  the 
field  of  pure  literature  or  literary  art,  is  always  precarious  and  not 
seldom  quite  puerile :  that  of  Mr.  Arnold,  even  on  points  of  literary 
effect,  is  too  often  trivially  and  cheaply  fallacious;  but  in  Poe, 
though  we  m:iy  find  critical  caprice  and  extravagance,  the  standard 
of  ratiocination,  the  ruling  quality  of  the  logic,  is  always  high  and 
masculine.  And  against  a  few  extravagances  of  praise  and  dis- 
praise, there  are  a  hundred  sure  and  true  verdicts,  given  long  in 
advance  of  general  appreciation.  When  we  look  to  see  what  line 
he  takes  as  a  critic,  we  find  him  delightedly  extolling  Tennyson  as 
a  great  poet  when  men  were  still  worshipping  devoutly  at  the  shrine 
of  Wordsworth ;  insisting  from  the  first  that  the  obscure  Hawthorne 
was  a  genius  of  a  far  higher  order  than  Longfellow;  welcoming 
Dickens  as  a  great  artist  in  the  humours  of  character,  but  warning 
him  that  he  had  no  gift  of  construction ;  heartily  eulogizing  Hood ; 

1  "Macaulay  and  Dilke  and  one  or  two  others  excepted,"  writes  Poe  {Mar- 
ginalia, vii.),  "there  is  not  in  Great  Britain  a  critic  who  can  fairly  be  considered 
worthy  the  name." 


l68  JOHN   MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 

giving  generous  praise  to  Mr.  Home's  Orion;  denying  merit  to 
the  popular  Lever;  pointing  out  that  the  still  more  popular  Valen- 
tine Vox  was  not  literature;  standing  up  for  fair  play  to  Moore; 
keenly  scrutinizing  Macaulay;  doing  homage  to  Mrs.  Browning; 
paying  the  fullest  admiring  tribute  to  the  memory  of  Lamb; 
coolly  and  impartially  analyzing  Cooper  —  always  quick  to  give 
honour  where  honour  was  due,  and  to  protest  against  critical  in- 
justice; never  once  pandering  to  commercialism  or  tolerating  the 
puffery  of  the  undeserving;  never  weighting  his  scales  for  the 
benefit  of  any,  save  perhaps  when  his  idiosyncrasy  made  him  exag- 
gerate the  merits  of  some  women-poets.  As  for  the  pedantry,  one 
may  suggest  that  there  are  departments  of  criticism  to  which  Mr. 
James,  admirable  critic  as  he  is,  may  be  a  stranger;  and  that  it  is 
yet  not  pedantry  to  be  at  home  in  these. 

Let  us  glose  nothing:  let  us  admit  that  in  discussing  the  com- 
monplace quality  of  Lever,  Poe  becomes  so  extravagant  in  his 
esteem  of  the  kind  of  fiction  to  which  his  own  faculty  pointed  as  to 
say  that  "for  one  Fouque  there  are  fifty  Molieres,"  and  to  declare 
that  "Mr.  Dickens  has  no  more  business  with  the  rabble  than  a 
seraph  with  a  chapcaii  de  bras  "  —  here  stultifying  a  previous  utter- 
ance. There  is  nothing  to  be  said  for  such  deliration  as  that,  of 
course:  we  can  but  set  it  down  to  the  brain-flaw.  Nor  can  it  be 
denied  that  the  temper  of  his  writing  is  often  faulty;  that  he  shows 
"bad  form"  enough  to  justify  M.  Hennequin's  use  of  the  word 
"littlenesses."  The  note,  in  fact,  is  often  sharply  neurotic.  But 
at  the  risk  of  being  charged  with  neck-or-nothing  partisanship,  I 
venture  hereanent  to  indorse  the  phrase  of  the  friendly  reviewer 
who  pronounced  Poe  "potentially"  one  of  the  greatest  of  critics. 
It  is  a  perfectly  fair  distinction.  One  finds  that  Poe's  critical  judg- 
ment was  generally  unerring;  and  that  he  invariably  knew  and 
told  how  and  why  he  reached  his  verdict;  and  one  finds  in  an 
utterly  preposterous  misjudgment  on  his  part  only  a  sign  of  mo- 
mentary distraction.  For  the  comparative  bareness  of  the  critical 
part  of  his  work  is  no  argument  against  his  being  a  great  critic. 
Indeed  the  very  faults  that  are  most  flagrant  in  his  critical  work,  the 
stress  of  temper  over  small  matters  and  small  writers,  and  the 
pedantic-looking  persistence  in  theoretic  analysis,  clearly  come  of 
the  spontaneous  play  of  his  critical  faculty  through  the  medium 
of  a  flawed  nervous  system,  without  check  from  the  other  faculties 
of  character.  Hence  the  air  of  "littleness,"  even  of  moral  defect. 
It  was  not  that,  as  the  wiseacres  said,  he  was  without  character; 


POE  169 

but  that  in  him  certain  intellectual  faculties  were  so  developed 
as  to  go  to  work  without  control  from  the  character,  at  least  in  his 
excited  moods.     And  it  was  his  hard  fate  that,  as  a  hack  journalist, 
he  had  to  write  in  all  moods,  and  on  matters  of  journalistic  attrac- 
tion —  a  simple  economic  fact  which  is  strangely  disregarded  by  his 
gainsayers.^     When  he  was  not  nervously  excited,  again,  the  very 
strength  of  his  critical  faculty  tended  to  make  him  pronounce 
rigorously  technical  and  unadorned  decisions  where  other  men 
would  turn  out  polished  and  charming  essays;  but  in  the  terms  of 
the  case  his  work  is  more  truly  critical  than  theirs.     The  truth  is 
that  in  our  literature  pure  criticism  is  very  scarce.     Some  of  our 
most  popular  and  charming  critics,  so-called,  are  rather  essayists 
than  methodical  judges  of  literature :  they  write  a  propos  of  books 
and  authors,  giving  us  in  so  doing  a  finished  expression  of  their 
own  sentiments  and  their  own  philosophy,  often  laying  down  sound 
Hterary  opinions  and  displaying  a  fine  taste;  but  leaving  us  rather 
to  echo  their  conclusions  out  of  esteem  for  their  authority  than  guid- 
ing us  to  any  science  of  discrimination  on  our  own  account.     Writ- 
ing as  critics,  they  are  adding  to  literature  rather  than  effectively 
analyzing  it.     With  Poe  it  is  altogether  different.     We  read  his 
criticisms  not  for  their  own  literary  quality  but  for  their  judicial 
value  and  their  service  to  critical  science;    and  though  it  follows 
that  they  can  never  be  widely  known,  it  is  not  unsafe  to  predict  for 
them  recognition  and  interest  at  a  time  when  a  great  deal  of  the 
more  "readable"  products  of  modern  critics  are  forgotten.     Cer- 
tainly Poe  was  in  advance  of  his  time  in  the  rigour  of  his  critical 
principles.     The  unrealized  ambition  of  his  literary  life,  the  foun- 
dation of  a  critical  journal  which  should  be  absolutely  honest  and 
be  written  by  none  but  competent  critics,  giving  the  reasons  for 
all  their  judgments,  was  utterly  Utopian.     Neither  the  required 
critics  nor  fit  readers  then  existed  or  yet  exist  in  America,  or  for 
that  matter  in  England.     Now,  as  in  Poe's  day,  it  may  be  that  the 
qualified  craftsmen  in  the  States  have  to  waste  their  strength  in 
miscellaneity ;  but  however  that  may  be  it  is  certain  that  American 
criticism,  like  English,  makes  but  a  poor  show  beside  the  critical 

>  We  have  his  own  anxious  avowal  in  his  masterly  critique  of  Barnahy  Rudge: 
"From  what  we  have  here  said,  and  perhaps  said  without  due  deliberation  (for, 
alas  !  the  hurried  duties  of  the  journalist  preclude  it).  .  .  ."  The  same  explana- 
tion will  account  for  the  inconsistencies  of  phrase  in  the  critique  on  Hawthorne. 
And  some  of  the  worst  exhibitions  in  the  Broadtvay  Journal  are  to  be  set  down 
to  the  fact,  noted  by  Mr.  Ingram,  that  Poe  had  at  times  to  manufacture  most  of 
the  matter  for  an  issue,  this  when  his  physique  was  rapidly  running  down. 


170  JOHN   MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 

literature  of  France.  For  illustration,  it  must  suffice  here  to  sug- 
gest a  comparison  of  the  graceful  and  genial  essay  of  Mr.  Stedman, 
the  best  American  estimate  of  Poe,  with  the  article  by  M.  Emile 
Hennequin  in  the  Revue  Contemporaine;  ^  an  analytical  study 
which,  reading  it  as  I  do  when  my  own  essay  is  as  good  as  written, 
makes  me  feel  as  if  my  labour  were  mostly  thrown  away.  M. 
Hennequin,  perhaps,  would  not  resent  ^  the  inference  that  he  has 
learned  some  lessons  of  analysis  from  Poe ;  who,  by  the  way,  per- 
formed as  remarkable  a  feat  of  analysis  in  his  criticism  of  Barnahv 
Rudge  as  in  any  of  his  other  productions.  The  decomposition  of 
that  story,  the  revelation  of  the  writer's  mental  processes,  and  the 
deduction  of  the  plot  from  the  opening  chapters,  drawing  as  they 
did  from  Dickens  an  inquiry  whether  his  critic  had  dealings  with 
the  devil,  are  things  to  be  remembered  in  the  history  of  literature. 
But  if  there  were  no  such  achievement  to  Poe's  credit,  and  if  he 
had  not  written  his  essay  on  the  American  Drama,  one  of  the  ablest 
dramatic  criticisms  ever  penned,  that  body  of  multifold  criticism 
which  stands  in  his  works  under  the  title  Marginalia  would  alone 
suffice,  to  my  thinking,  to  prove  him  a  born  critic.  Barring  some 
follies,  some  pretentiousness,  some  intended  nonsense,  and  some 
inexplicable  contradictions,  which  suggest  either  deliberate  mysti- 
fication or  mixed  authorship,  that  miscellany  of  paragraphs  and 
essaylets  is  a  perpetual  sparkle  of  clear  thought,  into  which  one 
dives  time  after  time,  always  finding  stimulus,  even  if  it  be  of 
provocation,  always  buoyantly  upborne  by  the  masterful  mind. 

But  while  we  find  Poe  even  in  his  college  days  making  curious 
attempts  to  "divide  his  mind"  by  doing  two  things  at  once,  and  in 
later  life  musing  intently  on  "the  power  of  words,"  his  thinking 
faculty  was  not  limited  to  analysis  and  criticism.  It  so  happens 
that  he  has  given  us,  in  addition  to  all  his  artistic  and  critical  work, 
one  of  the  most  extraordinary  productions  of  imaginative  philo- 
sophic synthesis  in  literature.  The  Eureka  has,  indeed,  no  socio- 
logical bearing,  save  in  so  far  as  it  incidentally  throws  out  the 
suggestion  that  as  "the  importance  of  the  development  of  the  ter- 
restrial vitality  proceeds  equally  with  the  terrestrial  condensation," 
we  may  surmise  the  stages  of  the  evolution  of  life  to  be  in  terms  of 
the  variations  of  the  solar  influence  on  the  earth,  and  that  the  dis- 
charge of  a  new  planet,  inferior  to  Mercury,  might  freshly  modify 
the  terrestrial  surface  so  as  to  produce  "a  race  both  materially  and 

1  Januarj',  1885;   reprinted  in  the  volume  Rcrivains  Francises. 

2  M.  Hennequin,  alas!    died  suddenly  in  the  summer  of  1888,  in  his  prime. 


POE  171 

spiritually  superior  to  Man."  The  speculation  is  interesting,  but 
remote  from  everyday  interests.  A  remarkable  detail  in  Poe's 
life  and  character  is  that  he  rarely  touches  on  things  political; 
whence,  perhaps,  an  impression  that  he  had  no  sympathy  with 
social  movement  and  aspiration  in  general.  On  the  strength,  pre- 
sumably, of  the  allusion  to  mob  rule  in  Some  Words  with  a  Mummy, 
and  of  some  sentences  in  the  Colloquy  of  Monos  and  Una,  Mr. 
Lang  ^  confusedly  decides  that  "If  democratic  ecstasies  are  a  tissue 
of  historical  errors  and  self-complacent  content  with  the  common- 
place, no  one  saw  that  more  clearly  than  Poe."  But  the  school  of 
languid  anti-democrats  cannot  rightfully  claim  Poe  as  being  on 
their  side.  If  they  will  read  chap.  vii.  of  the  Marginalia  they  will 
find  him  expressing  democratic  sentiments  in  his  own  person ;  and 
in  his  Fifty  Suggestions  (not  a  very  satisfactory  compilation)  they 
will  find  a  remarkable  prophetic  judgment  as  to  the  revolutionary 
spirit  in  Europe.  If  further  proof  is  wanted  of  Poe's  essential 
democratism,  I  would  cite  the  circumstance,  not  generally  known, 
that  in  the  Broadway  Journal  there  appeared,  while  he  was  sole 
editor,  an  article  entitled  "Art  Singing  and  Heart  Singing,"  signed 
"Walter  Whitman,"  in  which  are  suggested  for  apparently  the  first 
time  those  doctrines  as  to  democratic  culture  which  have  since  be- 
come so  familiar;  and  that  there  is  the  editorial  note  "It  is  scarcely 
necessary  to  add  that  we  agree  with  our  correspondent  through- 
out." The  fact  remains,  however,  that  Poe  made  no  attempt  at  a 
sociological  synthesis.  Setting  aside  the  constructive  element  in 
his  tales,  it  is  in  his  cosmogonic  philosophy  that  we  must  look  for 
the  synthetic  side  of  his  mind. 


VI 

It  resulted  from  the  insistence  of  the  "reasoning  reason"  in  Poe 
that  the  train  of  thought  which  evolved  the  Eureka  found  expres- 
sion also  in  his  artistic  work,  while  at  the  same  time  the  growing 
insurgence  of  temperament  gave  an  emotional  cast  to  his  phi- 
losophy. To  say  nothing  of  his  psychological  tales,  we  have  the 
Colloquy  of  Monos  and  Una  (as  to  the  alleged  plagiarizing  in  which 
there  is  not  a  shadow  of  evidence)  where  two  souls  in  heaven  look 
back  on  the  finished  course  of  humanity;  the  Conversation  of  Eiros 
and  Charmian,  in  which  similarly  one  spirit  tells  another  of  how 

'  In  the  preface  to  the  "Parchment"  edition  of  Poe's  poems. 


172  JOHN  MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 

the  race  was  destroyed ;  and  The  Power  of  Words,  in  which  yet 
again  two  immortals  talk  of  transcendental  things.  In  this  last 
dialogue  there  is  a  touch  which  for  vastitude  of  imagination  is  per- 
haps unmatchable.  "Come,"  says  the  spirit  Agathos  to  Oinos, 
who  is  "new-fiedged  with  immortality"  —  "Come !  we  will  leave 
to  the  left  the  loud  harmony  of  the  Pleiades,  and  sweep  outward 
from  the  throne  into  the  starry  meadows  beyond  Orion,  where,  for 
pansies  and  violets  and  heart's-ease,  are  the  beds  of  the  triplicate 
and  triple-tinted  suns."  In  the  way  of  "brave  translunary  things  " 
it  will  not  be  easy  to  beat  that.  This  is  indeed  pole  sis ;  and  it  was 
perhaps  with  a  true  instinct  that  Poe,  flatly  contradicting  his  own 
rule  that  a  poem  must  be  short  to  be  truly  poetic,  recorded  his  desire 
that  the  Eureka,  with  all  its  logic  and  criticism,  should  be  regarded 
as  a  poem.  It  is  a  great,  impassioned,  imaginative  projection, 
beginning  in  just  some  such  elemental  swell  of  ideal  emotion  as 
gives  birth  to  poetry.  But  there  could  be  no  greater  mistake  than 
to  regard  the  Eureka,  with  its  vast  cosmogonic  sweep,  as  a  mere 
rhapsody.  Dr.  William  Hand  Browne,  who  has  made  it  the  sub- 
ject of  a  sufhciently  practical  article,  finds  that  its  author  possessed, 
"in  remarkable  excellence,  the  scientific  mind."  ^  Recognizing 
this.  Dr.  Browne  remarks  that  it  has  been  Poe's  peculiarly  hard 
fortune  to  be  not  only  persistently  maligned  by  his  enemies  but 
imperfectly  estimated  by  his  friends;  a  truth  which  Dr.  Browne 
goes  on  unconsciously  to  illustrate  by  denying  Poe  credit  for  The 
Gold  Bug  and  The  Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue,  and,  as  we  have 
seen,  by  charging  him  with  writing  absurdly  and  ignorantly  on 
the  classical  measures.  These  injustices,  however,  perhaps  give 
only  the  more  weight  to  Dr.  Browne's  eulogy  when  he  attributes  to 
Poe  "the  power  of  expressing  his  thoughts,  however  involved, 
subtle,  or  profound,  with  such  precision,  such  lucidity,  and  withal 
with  such  simplicity  of  style,  that  we  hardly  know  where  to  look 
for  his  equal :  certainly  nowhere  among  American  writers."  That 
seems  to  me  quite  true;  and  there  could  be  no  better  evidence  in 
support  than  the  Eureka,  which  only  needs  to  be  separately  re- 
printed without  its  worrying  dashes  and  without  italics  to  rank 
as  the  most  luminous  and  the  most  original  theistic  treatise  in  the 
language.     This  verdict  may  perhaps  incur  the  more  suspicion 

*  It  is  one  of  the  mistakes  of  Dr.  Nordau  to  exclaim  vociferously  at  M.  Morice 
for  naming  Poe  in  the  same  group  with  Spencer  and  Claude  Bernard  (Degeneresence 
French  trans,  i.  242).  Dr.  Nordau  evidently  knows  very  little  about  Poe's  per- 
formance. 


POE  173 

when  I  avow  that  I  pass  it  in  the  conviction  that  Poe's  reasoning 
breaks  down,  hke  all  other  theistic  reasoning,  when  its  conclusion 
is  applied  to  the  primary  problem.  It  is  the  way  in  which  he  rea- 
sons up  to  a  conclusion  subversive  of  itself  and  of  all  other  theisms, 
that  makes  this  treatise  unique  in  philosophy.  It  is  plain,  indeed, 
that  Poe  on  his  way  reasoned  himself  out  of  his  primary  theism 
into  an  entirely  new  poly-pantheism ;  and  of  course  it  is  a  plain 
proof  of  mental  disturbance  thus  to  wander  on  the  path  of  an 
inquiry.^  But  let  the  mental  overpoise  be  taken  for  granted,  and 
the  intellectual  interest  of  the  performance  remains. 

At  the  outset  he  decides  with  the  most  absolute  arbitrariness  that 
there  is  a  finite  "universe  of  stars,"  and  an  infinite  "universe  of 
space"  —  a  proposition  which  certainly  testifies  to  his  failure  to  get 
behind  the  common  illusion  of  space  as  the  antithesis  of  existence. 
No  less  arbitrarily  does  he  assume  Deity,  making  none  of  the  popu- 
lar pretences  to  reach  that  hypothesis  by  way  of  elimination.  "As 
our  starting-point,  then,"  he  writes,  "let  us  adopt  the  Godhead. 
Of  this  Godhead  in  itself,  he  alone  is  not  imbecile,  he  alone  is  not 
impious,  who  propounds  —  nothing."  ^  But,  following  the  fa- 
miliar, the  fatal  path  of  all  theology,  he  will  not  admit  that  the  in- 
conceivable will  be  forever  unconceived,  and,  having  to  begin  with 
affirmed  its  volition,  he  immediately  after  affirms  that  he  has  some- 
thing else  to  propound  concerning  it :  ^ 

"An  intuition  altogether  irresistible,  althousfh  inexpressible,  forces  me 
to  the  conclusion  that  what  God  originally  created  —  that  that  Matter,  which, 
by  dint  of  his  Volition,  he  first  made  from  his  spirit,  or  from  Nihility  ( ! ) 
could  have  been  nothing  but  matter  in  its  utmost  conceivable  state  of  — 
what  ?  —  of  Simplicity.  This  will  be  found  the  sole  absolute  assumption  of 
my  Discourse."  '^ 

In  other  words,  "Oneness  is  all  that  I  predicate  of  the  originally 
created  Matter."  But  "the  assumotion  of  absolute  Unity  in  the 
primordial  Particle  includes  that  of  infinite  divisibility,"  so  that  we 
yet  further  assume  attraction  and  repulsion  as  primal  character- 
istics of  the  universe,  the  first  being  its  material  and  the  second  its 
spiritual  principle."  "I  feel,  in  a  word,  that  here  the  God  has 
interposed,  and  here  only,  because  here  and  here  only  the  knot 

*  It  would  seem  indeed  that  only  in  his  last  years  did  he  begin  to  pay  much  at- 
tention to  religious  problems.  His  previous  attitude  seems  to  have  been  conven- 
tionally, sometimes  even  vulgarly,  orthodox  —  a  surprising  thing  in  the  case  of 
such  a  critical  intelligence.  2  Works,  Ingram's  ed.,  III.  107. 

3  P.  108.  *V.  114. 


174  JOHN  MACKINNON  ROBERTSON 

demanded  the  interposition  of  the  God."  '  "Attraction  and  repul- 
sion are  matter."  Then  comes  many  passes  of  impassioned  brood- 
ing on  the  conceptions  thus  set  out  with,  and  of  quasi-mathematical 
extension  of  the  premises,  all  leading  up  anew  to  the  thing  assumed 
at  the  outset  —  the  tinitude  of  the  "  universe  of  stars."  "  Gravity 
exists  on  account  of  Matter's  having  been  irradiated,  at  its  origin, 
atomically,  into  a  limited  sphere  of  space,  from  one,  individual, 
unconditional,  irrelative  and  absolute  Particle  Proper.  .  .  ."  ^ 
Thus  we  get  rid  of  "the  impossible  conception  of  an  infinite  exten- 
sion of  Matter,"  and  set  up  the  other  conception  of  an  "illimitable 
Universe  of  Vacancy  beyond."^ 

But  here  the  poet  flinches,  as  well  he  might,  and  we  have  this 
confession :  — 

"  Let  me  declare  only  that,  as  an  individual,  I  myself  feel  impelled  to  fancy, 
without  daring  to  call  it  more  —  that  there  does  exist  a  limitless  succession  of 
Universes,  more  or  less  similar  to  that  of  which  we  have  cognizance — to 
that  of  which  alone  we  shall  ever  have  cognizance  — -  at  the  very  least  until  the 
return  of  our  own  particular  Universe  into  Unity.  //  such  clusters  of  clus- 
ters exist,  however  —  and  they  do  — ■  it  is  abundantly  clear  that  having  no  part 
in  our  origin,  they  have  no  portion  in  our  laws.  They  neither  attract  us, 
nor  we  them.  Their  material,  their  snirit  is  not  ours,  is  not  that  which  ob- 
tains in  any  part  of  our  Universe.  They  could  not  impress  our  senses  or 
our  souls.  .  .  .  Each  exists,  apart  and  independently,  in  the  bosom  of  its 
proper  and  particular  God."  * 

And  in  the  end  the  proposition  is,  on  the  one  hand:  — 

"  That  each  soul  is,  in  part,  its  own  God,  its  own  Creator ;  in  a  word,  that 
God  —  now  exists  solelv  in  the  difused  matter  and  Spirit  of  the  Universe; 
and  that  the  regathering  of  this  diffused  Matter  and  Spirit  will  be  but  the  re- 
constitution  of  the  purely  Spiritual  and  Individual  God;" 

while,  on  the  other  hand,  this  God  is  "one  of  an  absolutely  infinite 
number  of  similar  Beings  that  people  the  absolutely  infinite  domains 
of  the  absolutely  infinite  snace."  ^  And  yet  he  had  earlier  insisted, 
in  the  spirit  of  modern  Monism,  on  "the  condensation  of  laivs  into 
law,"  and  the  conclusion  that  "each  law  of  Nature  is  dependent 
at  all  points  upon  all  other  laws," '  a  maxim  which  quashes  his 
infinity  of  irrelated  universes  and  Gods;  and  again  he  insisted: 
"That  Nature  and  the  God  of  Nature  are  distinct,  no  thinking 

^Works,  Vol.  III.  p.  113.  2p_  J37_ 

*  p.  163.  ••  p.  164;   italics  Poe's. 

«P.  194.  6  P.  147. 


POE 


175 


being  can  doubt  "  ^  —  a  doctrine  which  quashes  his  unitary  Pan- 
theism. Thus,  on  his  own  principle  that  "a  perfect  consistency 
can  be  nothing  but  an  absolute  truth,"  -  he  has  definitely  missed 
truth.  It  is  the  fate  of  all  theosophies.  And  still  his  failure,  in 
virtue  of  the  mere  energy  and  sustained  imaginativeness  of  its  rea- 
soning, is  a  permanently  notable  philosophical  document  —  this 
though  his  neurosis  was  visibly  worsening  at  the  time  of  the  com- 
position to  the  point  of  affecting  its  whole  tone,  and  much  of  the 
reasoning.  Capacity  in  this  kind  must  be  measured  comparatively ; 
and  it  needs  neither  dissent  nor  agreement,  but  simply  acquaintance 
with  the  average  run  of  theistic  and  cosmological  reasoning,  to 
come  to  the  opinion  that  Poe  is  in  these  matters  as  abnormal,  as 
intensely  intellectual,  as  he  is  in  everything  else.^     The  book  — 

'  Works,  Vol.  in.  p.  147.  2  p.  100. 

^  The  very  hostile  critique  of  the  Eureka  by  Professor  Irving  Stringham,  re- 
printed in  the  notes  to  Vol.  IX.  of  Messrs.  Stedman  and  Woodberry's  edition,  really 
concedes  all  that  is  above  claimed  for  the  treatise  as  an  exhibition  of  intellectual 
power,  though  denying  it  all  scientific  originality  and  pronouncing  the  philosophical 
argument  the  "degrading  self-delusion  of  an  arrogant  and  fatuous  mind."  This 
is  a  sample  of  the  language  constantly  used  by  American  writers  towards  a  man  in 
whom  brain  disease  can  be  diagnosed  with  moral  certainty.  Everything  Poe 
wrote,  in  his  final  and  swiftly  failing  years,  is  discussed  by  most  of  his  detractors 
without  a  suggestion  that  it  comes  from  a  shaken  reason.  The  note  of  malice  is 
normal.  Professor  Stringham  takes  as  absolutely  certain  the  story  that  Poe  once 
said:  "My  whole  nature  utterly  revolts  at  the  idea  that  there  is  any  Being  in  the 
universe  superior  to  mvself."  Now,  that  story  (see  it  in  Ingram's  Life,  Chap. 
XVIII.)  has  a  most  dubious  aspect,  coming  as  it  does  from  a  rather  fanatical  theist ; 
and  I  confess  I  have  always  doubted  its  truth.  If  it  were  true,  it  would  to  a  candid 
critic  su-rgest  incipient  mania.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  essentially  unjust  so  to 
discuss  P'oe's  essav  as  to  convey  the  idea  that  it  ranks  low  among  similar  treatises. 
Professor  Strin"ham  calls  it  worthless,  and  a  waste  of  time.  If  the  same  thing 
be  said  of  the  philosophies  of  Berkeley,  Kant,  and  Hegel  —  as  it  might  just  as  well 
be  —  the  disparagement  of  Poe  would  be  somewhat  discounted.  But  the  can- 
dour of  the  current  American  criticism  of  Poe  mav  be  gathered  from  a  comparison 
of  the  language  held  towards  his  fallacies  with  that  used  in  regard  to  the  merely 
childish  theism  of  Mr.  Lowell  and  Mr.  Lanier,  and  the  random  pantheism  of  Emer- 
son. On  this  head  it  may  be  added  that  Professor  Stringham's  criticism  of  Poe 
breaks  down  even  on  some  scientific  issues.  He  affirms  of  Poe's  doctrine  that  the 
universe  is  in  a  state  of  ever-swifter  collapse:  "than  this,  nothing  could  be  more 
at  variance  with  the  great  law  of  the  conservation  of  energy."  There  is  no  such 
contradiction  in  the  case;  and  if  there  were  it  would  be  equally  chargeable  against 
Mr.  Spencer's  theory  of  rhythmal  disintegration  and  reintegration.  Again,  Pro- 
fessor Stringham  charges  Poe  with  showing"  fundamental  ignorance  of  astronomy" 
in  saying  that  "  the  planets  rotate  (on  their  own  axes)  in  elliptical  orbits,"  without 
noting  the  need  for  a  source  of  attraction  at  the  foci  of  the  ellipse.  Yet  Poe  had 
expressly  said  in  his  Addendu  to  the  Eureka  (printed  before  Professor  Stringham's 
critique  in  the  new  edition)  that  the  sun's  axis  of  rotation  was  "  not  the  centre  of 
his  figure,"  and  in  the  main  treatise  he  had  cited  Lagrange's  doctrine  as  to  a  varia- 
tion of  the  orbits  of  the  spheroids  from  circle  to  ellipse,  and  back  again,  by  reason 
of  variation  in  their  axes.  I  do  not  undertake  to  say  that  Poe's  conception  is 
sound;  but  I  do  say  that  Professor  Stringham  has  misrepresented  him. 


176  JOHN  MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 

for  it  is  a  book  in  itself  —  has,  indeed,  some  bad  passages,  where  he 
essays  to  be  humorous ;  but  as  against  this,  it  exhibits  a  competence 
in  matters  of  abstract  science,  and  a  hold  of  scientific  cosmic  theory, 
that  no  English  man  of  letters  of  that  day  possessed.  Much  sub- 
sequent scientific  thinking  is  anticipated  here;  Mr.  Spencer,  in 
particular,  might  have  drawn  from  it  his  fundamental  principle  of 
the  correlation  of  progress  and  heterogeneity;  and  the  poet  is  here 
found  triumphantly  and  independently  defending  the  Nebular 
Hypothesis  at  a  time  when  former  exponents  of  it  had  wavered  and 
proposed  to  abandon  it. 

To  Dr.  Browne's  important  commentary  it  might  be  added  that 
in  the  preliminary  section  Poe  emphatically  forestalls  some  of  the 
strongest  recent  declarations  against  the  absolute  Baconian  theory 
of  discovery,'  that  with  two  sweeps  of  his  blade  he  demolishes  a 
position  which  Mr.  Balfour  has  only  been  able  to  take  by  laborious 
assault  in  his  Defence  of  Philosophic  Doubt;  that  he  estimates 
Laplace  with  the  confident  discrimination  of  an  expert;  and  that 
he  speaks  with  intelligence  on  questions  of  astronomy  which  all 
but  experts  shun.  Such  is  his  measure  of  success,  of  impressive- 
ness,  in  an  undertaking  in  which  he  finally  fails. 

VII 

When,  after  thus  discursively  scanning  the  achievement  of  Poe, 
we  return  to  the  contemplation  of  him  as  a  personality,  there  arises 
a  feeling  of  absorbing  wonderment  at  the  strange  paradox  of  his 
being;  the  extraordinary  union  of  this  regnant  intellect  with  that 
ill-starred  temperament;  the  weakness  of  the  man  foiling  the 
strength  of  the  mind.  The  facts  are  plain.  While  he  was  writing 
his  most  rigorous  criticisms,  and  building  up  his  cosmogony  in  the 
white  light  and  dry  air  of  the  altitudes  of  his  reasoning  imagination, 
the  man  was  not  merely  stumbling  under  the  burden  of  his  constitu- 
tional vice  as  if  smitten  by  sorcery,  but  was  living  an  emotional 
life  of  passionate  yearnings  and  rending  griefs.  It  was  a  lament- 
able life.  After  his  stormy  youth,  in  the  latter  part  of  which  we 
find  him  attacked  by  the  most  crushing  hypochondria,  there  came 
the  cruel  train  of  pangs  represented  by  the  illness  of  his  wife,  who 
seems  to  have  truly  "died  a  hundred  deaths"  before  the  release 

»  Compare  Mill,  System  of  Logic,  B.  VI.  Chap.  V.  §  5;  Jevons,  Principles  of 
Science,  p.  576;  Tyndall,  Scientific  Use  of  the  Imagination  and  Other  l-'.ssays,  3d 
ed.  pp.  4,  8-9,  42-3;  and  Bagehot,  Postulates  oj  knglish  Political  Economy,  Stu- 
dent's ed.,  pp.  17-19. 


POE  177 

came;  and  in  this  period  it  was,  on  his  own  account,  that  in  a  state 
of  absolute  frenzy  between  his  woe  and  his  bitter  poverty,^  which 
seemed  to  league  itself  with  disease  against  the  young  victim,  he 
first  gave  way  to  delirious  alcoholism.  His  wife's  death  left  him 
heart-shaken,  the  long  agony  of  her  decline  having  deepened  his 
feehng  for  her  into  a  passion  of  pitying  worship.  As  years  passed 
on,  the  unstrung  emotionalism  of  the  man  made  him  turn  first  to 
one  and  then  to  another  woman  for  sympathy  and  love  —  this 
while  he  maintained  to  the  outside  world,  save  in  his  lapses,  his 
grave,  lofty,  high-bred  calm  of  manner;  and  bated  no  jot  of  skill 
or  thoroughness  in  his  artistic  work.  While  he  makes  distracted 
love  to  Mrs.  Whitman,  he  never  slackens  in  his  keen  derision  of  the 
transcendentalists,  whose  cloudy  philosophy  he  could  not  abide. 
He  writes  his  story  of  Hop  Frog  with  his  old  impassable  artistic 
aloofness,  and  writes  about  it  to  "Annie"  in  a  letter  touched  with 
hysteria.  "Forced,  unnatural,  false,"  "strained,  exaggerated, 
and  unnatural,"  are  the  terms  Mr.  Stoddard  applies  to  these  love- 
letters  and  letters  of  ecstatic  friendship;  and  we  cannot  gainsay 
him  here,  save  in  so  far  as  he  imputes  falsity.  The  case  is  one 
which  Mr.  Stoddard's  primitive  scalpel  cannot  dissect :  what  seems 
to  him  bad  acting  is  neurosis.  On  the  side  of  the  affections  Poe's 
sensitiveness  becomes  absolute  disease;  till  the  man  who  was 
accused  of  having  no  heart  is  wrecked  by  his  heart's  vibrations. 
But  the  intellect  is  never  really  subjected :  it  is  shaken  and  de- 
throned at  times  by  the  breaking  temperament;  but  it  is  uncon- 
quered  to  the  last.  He  becomes  almost  insane  when  his  engage- 
ment with  Mrs.  Whitman  is  broken ;  but  he  again  collects  himself, 
and  he  goes  his  way  in  silence.  It  is  eminently  significant  that,  as 
Mr.  Ingram  notes,  he  shows  no  resentment  at  being  charged  with 
aspiring  to  be  a  "glorious  devil,"  all  mind  and  no  heart,^  as  he 

'In  an  article  in  Harper's  Magazine  for  May,  1887,  entitled  "The  Recent 
Alovement  in  Southern  Literature,"  the  writer,  Mr.  Charles  W.  Coleman,  jun., 
says  he  has  before  him  a  series  of  letters  written  by  Poe's  employer  on  the  Rich- 
mond Literary  Messenger,  in  which  it  is  complained  that  Poe  "is  continually  after 
me  for  money.  I  am  as  sick  of  his  writings  as  1  am  of  him,  and  am  rather  more  than 
half  inclined  to  send  him  up  another  dozen  dollars,  and  along  with  them  all  his 
unpubhshed  MSS.,"  most  of  which  are  called  "stuff."  For  his  Pym  story  Poe 
asks  three  dollars  a  page.  "In  reality,"  says  the  employer,  "it  has  cost  me  twenty 
dollars  per  page"  —  a  statement  which  is  not  explained.  At  la^t  comes  this: 
"Highly  as  I  really  think  of  Mr.  Poe's  talents,  I  shall  be  forced  to  give  him  notice 
in  a  week  or  so  at  the  furthest,  that  I  can  no  longer  recognize  him  as  editor  of  the 
Messenger."  One  is  not  highly  impressed  by  the  tone  of  the  writer;  but  Poe's 
neediness  seems  clear. 

^  Mr.  Stedman  in  his  latest  criticism  of  Poe  (Introd.  to  vol.  vi.  of  new  ed.  of 
Works,  p.  24)  says  of  him,  more  in  the  manner  of  Griswold  than  in  that  of  Mr. 
N 


178 


JOHN  MACKINNON  ROBERTSON 


was  by  some  of  the  Brook  Farm  transcendentalists.  The  explana- 
tion, I  think,  clearly  is  that  while  he  was  conscious  of  his  tendency 
to  turn  emotions  into  reasonings,  he  also  knew  his  danger  from  his 
malady,  and  was  eager  to  have  it  overlooked.  "In  the  strange 
anomaly  of  my  existence,"  says  the  narrator  in  Berenice  —  a  story 
which  offers  abundant  data  for  the  "epilepsy"  theory  —  "feelings 
with  me  had  never  been  of  the  heart,  and  my  passions  always  were 
of  the  mind;"  and  here  there  is  a  certain  touch  of  self-study; 
but  we  must  not  be  misled  by  the  phrase.  Passionately  quick, 
on  the  one  hand,  to  resent  moral  aspersions,  and  extravagant  in  his 
emotional  outbursts,  he  had  the  pride  of  intellect  in  a  sufiicient  de- 
gree to  wish,  in  his  normal  condition,  to  be  regarded  as  above 
emotional  weakness.  One  who  knew  him  in  his  latter  days  thought 
there  was  to  be  detected  in  him  a  constant  effort  for  self-control. 

Looking  back  on  his  hapless  career,  and  contrasting  his  deserts 
with  his  lot,  and  with  his  reputation,  one  realizes  with  new  cer- 
tainty the  worthlessness  of  most  contemporary  judgments.  There 
are  stories  of  his  scrupulous  conscientiousness  and  of  his  social 
considerateness  such  as  could  be  told  of  few  of  his  detractors; 
and  yet  we  find  one  of  his  women  friends  resorting  to  inaccurate 
phrenology  to  account  for  the  defects  she  inferred  in  his  moral 
nature.  Absolutely  innocent  in  his  relations  with  women,  though 
his  unworldly  romanticism  in  their  regard  carried  him  into  some 

Stedman's  earlier  essaj':  "A  speck  of  reservation  spoiled  for  him  the  fullest  cup 
of  esteem,  even  when  tendered  by  the  most  knightly  and  authoritative  hands. 
Lowell's  A  Fable  for  Critics,  declaring  'three-fifths  of  him  genius,'  gave  him  an 
award  which  ought  to  content  even  an  unreasonable  man.  As  it  was,  the  good- 
natured  thrusts  of  one  whose  scholarship  was  unassailable,  at  his  metrical  and  other 
hobbies,  drew  from  him  a  somewhat  coarse  and  vindictive  review  of  the  whole 
satire."  It  is  true  that  Poe's  review  is  bad  in  tone;  but  that  does  not  put  Mr.  Sted- 
man  in  the  right,  or  bear  out  his  zealous  panegyric  of  Mr.  Lowell.  He  oddly  omits 
to  cite  the  "two-fifths  sheer  fudge,"  though  he  seems  to  think  that  Poe  ought  to  have 
welcomed  Mr.  Lowell's  kicks  for  the  sake  of  his  sixpences.  As  against  this  addi- 
tion to  the  countless  one-sided  verdicts  on  Poe,  I  must  point  out,  (i)  that  Poe  in  his 
critique  exhibits  anger  only  over  Mr.  Lowell's  very  coarse  attack  on  Southern 
slaveholders  in  general;  (2)  that  though  Mr.  Lowell's  lines  on  Poe  were  suffi- 
ciently impertinent  he  makes  no  protest  on  that  head;  (3)  that  Mr.  Lowell's  versi- 
fication, on  which  Poe  spends  most  of  his  blame,  was  really  excessively  bad, 
whatever  his  "scholarship"  may  have  been,  and  cried  aloud  for  a  retort  from  the 
assailed  metricist;  and  (4)  that  Poe's  show  of  vindictivcness  is  as  nothing  com- 
pared with  the  passionate  resentment  exhibited  in  one  of  Mr.  Lowell's  letters, 
recently  published  (Vol.  L  p.  ioq),  on  the  score  of  Poe's  having  charged  him  with  a 
plagiarism.  An  obvious  blunder  in  Poe's  citation  of  the  passage  imitated,  he 
actually  declares  to  have  been  a  wilful  perversion,  though  the  easy  exposure  of  it 
would  at  once  tend  to  discredit  Poe's  charge.  For  the  rest,  Mr.  Lowell's  critical 
treatment  of  Thoreau  makes  it  difficult  for  some  of  us  to  see  in  him  the  "knightly 
and  authoritative  "  critical  paragon  of  Mr.  Stedman's  worship. 


FOE  179 

miserable  embroilments,  he  came  to  be  reputed  an  extreme  liber- 
tine; and  his  one  fatal  failing  lost  him  some  of  the  friendships  he 
most  needed;,  virtue  and  goodness  being  not  always  as  merciful 
as  might  be  —  not  to  say  a  trifle  stupid.  One  of  the  most  intensely 
concentrative  and  painstaking  of  writers,  he  has  been  stigmatized 
as  indolent  and  spendthrift.  To  quote  once  more  from  the  judg- 
ment of  Professor  Minto  in  the  Encydopcedia  Bntannica,  a  vin- 
dication which,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  will  set  the  current  ^  of  a  true  ap- 
preciation of  the  man :  —  "Poe  failed  to  make  a  living  by  literature, 
not  because  he  was  an  irregular  profligate  in  the  vulgar  sense,  but 
because  he  did  ten  times  as  much  work  as  he  was  paid  to  do  —  a 
species  of  profligacy  perhaps,  but  not  quite  the  same  in  kind  as  that 
with  which  he  was  charged  by  his  biographer."  Pity  and  praise, 
we  repeat  finally,  are  far  more  his  due  than  blame.  Morally  he 
lives  for  us  as  the  high-strung,  birth-stricken,  suffering  man, 
"whom  unmerciful  disaster  followed  fast  and  followed  faster," 
till,  instead  of  the  proud,  noble  countenance  of  the  earlier  days,  we 
see  in  his  latest  portrait,  as  M.  Hennequin  describes  it  in  his  vivid 
French  way,  a  "face  as  of  an  old  woman,  white  and  haggard,  hol- 
lowed, relaxed,  ploughed  with  all  the  lines  of  grief  and  of  the  shaken 
reason;  where  over  the  sunken  eyes,  dimmed  and  dolorous  and  far- 
gazing,  there  is  throned  the  one  feature  unblemished  stfll,  the 
superb  forehead,  high  and  firm,  behind  which  his  soul  is  expiring." 
The  pity  of  it  all,  and  of  the  inexpressibly  tragic  conclusion,  is  too 
profound  to  be  outweighed  by  the  remembrance  that  the  "delicate 
and  splendid  cerebral  mechanism"  remained,  for  its  ratiocinative 
purposes,  almost  intact  to  the  end.  But  it  is  by  that  magnificent 
endowment  that  the  world  is  bound  to  remember  him.  Among  the 
crowd  of  men  of  one  or  of  a  few  capacities,  winning  distinction  by 
giving  their  whole  strength  to  this  pursuit  or  that,  and  living  with 
hardly  any  other  intellectual  interest,  he  stands  forth  as  an  intelli- 
gence of  singularly  various  equipment  and  faculty.  Science  was 
not  too  dry  for  him ;  the  analysis  of  style  not  too  subtle  or  frivolous : 
he  could  frame  exquisite  verse  and  stringent  logic  with  equal  mas- 
tery and  equal  zeal.  As  a  boy  he  had  a  turn  for  swimming  such 
as  would  have  led  many  men  into  a  career  of  sheer  athletics ;  in  a 
paper  on  The  Philosophy  of  Furniture  he  embodies  a  passion  for 

1  In  the  dearth  of  adequate  estimates  of  Poe,  it  is  much  to  be  able  to  add  to  Mr. 
Minto's  that  of  Lord  Tennyson,  published  after  this  essay  was  first  written.  Ac- 
cordine;  to  the  newspaper  report,  the  Laureate  in  conversation  or  correspondence 
ranked  Poe  highest  among  American  mea  of  letters,  describing  some  more  popular 
writers  as  "pygmies"  beside  him. 


l8o  JOHN   MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 

minor  aesthetics  such  as  can  serve  some  men  for  a  Hfe's  mission. 
For  him  there  were  no  parochial  boundaries  in  the  world  of  the  in- 
tellect :  he  was  free  of  all  provinces ;  overproud  of  his  range,  per- 
haps, but  with  an  unusual  title  to  be  proud.  And  thus  it  is  that  we 
are  fain  to  think  of  him  as  more  than  a  poet,  more  than  a  critic, 
more  than  an  aesthete,  more  than  a  tale-teller,  more  than  a  scientific 
thinker ;  a  strange  combination  not  seen  in  every  age,  and  lastingly 
remarkable  as  such.     He  was  a  great  brain. 


VIII 

JOHN  DRYDEN 

(1631-1700) 

PREFACE   TO   THE   FABLES 
(1700) 

'Tis  with  a  poet,  as  with  a  man  who  designs  to  build,  and  is 
very  exact,  as  he  supposes,  in  casting  up  the  cost  beforehand; 
but,  generally  speaking,  he  is  mistaken  in  his  account,  and  reckons 
short  in  the  expense  he  first  intended.  He  alters  his  mind  as  the 
work  proceeds,  and  will  have  this  or  that  convenience  more,  of 
which  he  had  not  thought  when  he  began.  So  has  it  happened 
to  me.  I  have  built  a  house,  where  I  intended  but  a  lodge;  yet 
with  better  success  than  a  certain  nobleman,  who,  beginning 
with  a  dog-kennel,  never  lived  to  finish  the  palace  he  had  con- 
trived. 

From  translating  the  first  of  Homer's  Iliads  (which  I  intended 
as  an  essay  to  the  whole  work)  I  proceeded  to  the  translation  of 
the  twelfth  book  of  Ovid's  Metamorphoses,  because  it  contains, 
among  other  things,  the  causes,  the  beginning,  and  ending,  of 
the  Trojan  war.  Here  I  ought  in  reason  to  have  stopped;  but 
the  speeches  of  Ajax  and  Ulysses  lying  next  in  my  way,  I  could 
not  balk  them.  When  I  had  compassed  them,  I  was  so  taken 
with  the  former  part  of  the  fifteenth  book  (which  is  the  master- 
piece of  the  whole  Metamorphoses),  that  I  enjoined  myself  the 
pleasing  task  of  rendering  it  into  English.  And  now  I  found, 
by  the  number  of  my  verses,  that  they  began  to  swell  into  a  little 
volume;  which  gave  me  an  occasion  of  looking  backward  on 
some  beauties  of  my  author,  in  his  former  books :  there  occurred 
to  me  the  Hunting  of  the  Boar,  Cinyras  and  Myrrha,  the  good- 
natured  story  of  Baucis  and  Philemon,  with  the  rest,  which  I  hope 

181 


1 82  JOHN   DRY  DEN 

I  have  translated  closely  enough,  and  given  them  the  same  turn 
of  verse  which  they  had  in  the  original ;  and  this,  I  may  say  with- 
out vanity,  is  not  the  talent  of  every  poet.  He  who  has  arrived 
the  nearest  to  it,  is  the  ingenious  and  learned  Sandys,  the  best 
versifier  of  the  former  age ;  if  I  may  properly  call  it  by  that  name, 
which  was  the  former  part  of  this  concluding  century.  For 
Spenser  and  Fairfax  both  flourished  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth; great  masters  in  our  language,  and  who  saw  much  farther 
into  the  beauties  of  our  numbers  than  those  who  immediately 
followed  them.  Milton  was  the  poetical  son  of  Spenser,  and 
Mr.  Waller  of  Fairfax,  for  we  have  our  lineal  descents  and  clans 
as  w^ell  as  other  families.  Spenser  more  than  once  insinuates 
that  the  soul  of  Chaucer  was  transfused  into  his  body,  and  that 
he  was  begotten  by  him  two  hundred  years  after  his  decease. 
Milton  has  acknowledged  to  me  that  Spenser  was  his  original; 
and  many  besides  myself  have  heard  our  famous  Waller  own  that 
he  derived  the  harmony  of  his  numbers  from  the  Godfrey  of  Biil- 
loign,  which  was  turned  into  English  by  Mr.  Fairfax. 

But  to  return.  Having  done  with  Ovid  for  this  time,  it  came 
into  my  mind  that  our  old  English  poet,  Chaucer,  in  many  things 
resembled  him,  and  that  with  no  disadvantage  on  the  side  of  the 
modern  author,  as  I  shall  endeavour  to  prove  when  I  compare 
them;  and  as  I  am,  and  always  have  been,  studious  to  promote 
the  honour  of  my  native  country,  so  I  soon  resolved  to  put  their 
merits  to  the  trial,  by  turning  some  of  the  Canterhiiry  Talcs  into 
our  language,  as  it  is  now  refined;  for  by  this  means,  both  the 
poets  being  set  in  the  same  light,  and  dressed  in  the  same  English 
habit,  story  to  be  compared  with  story,  a  certain  judgment  may 
be  made  betwixt  them  by  the  reader,  without  obtruding  my  opin- 
ion on  him.  Or  if  I  seem  partial  to  my  countryman  and  predeces- 
sor in  the  laurel,  the  friends  of  antiquity  are  not  few;  and  besides 
many  of  the  learned,  Ovid  has  almost  all  the  beaux,  and  the  whole 
fair  sex,  his  declared  patrons.  Perhaps  I  have  assumed  some- 
what more  to  mvself  than  thev  allow  me,  because  I  have  adven- 
tured  to  sum  up  the  evidence;  but  the  readers  are  the  jury,  and 
their  privilege  remains  entire,  to  decide  according  to  the  merits 
of  the  cause,  or,  if  they  please,  to  bring  it  to  another  hearing  before 
some  other  court.  In  the  meantime,  to  follow  the  thread  of  my 
discourse  (as  thoughts,  according  to  Mr.  Hobbes,  have  always 
some  connection),  so  from  Chaucer  I  was  led  to  think  on  Boccace, 
who  was  not  only  his  contemporary,  but  also  pursued  the  same 


PREFACE  TO   THE  FABLES  1 83 

studies;  wrote  novels  in  prose,  and  many  works  in  verse;  par- 
ticularly is  said  to  have  invented  the  octave  rhyme,  or  stanza  of 
eight  lines,  which  ever  since  has  been  maintained  by  the  practice 
of  all  Italian  writers,  who  are,  or  at  least  assume  the  title  of  heroic 
poets.  He  and  Chaucer,  among  other  things,  had  this  in  cc^mmon, 
that  they  refined  their  mother  tongue;  but  with  this  difference, 
that  Dante  had  begun  to  file  their  language,  at  least  in  verse,  before 
the  time  of  Boccace,  who  likewise  received  no  little  help  from  his 
master  Petrarch.  But  the  reformation  of  their  prose  was  wholly 
owing  to  Boccace  himself,  who  is  yet  the  standard  of  purity  in 
the  Italian  tongue,  though  many  of  his  phrases  are  become  obso- 
lete, as  in  process  of  time  it  must  needs  happen.  Chaucer  (as 
you  have  formerly  been  told  by  our  learned  jMr.  Rymer)  first 
adorned  and  amplified  our  barren  tongue  from  the  Provencal, 
which  was  then  the  most  polished  of  all  the  modern  languages; 
but  this  subject  has  been  copiously  treated  by  that  great  critic, 
who  deserves  no  little  commendation  from  us  his  countrymen. 
For  these  reasons  of  time,  and  resemblance  of  genius,  in  Chaucer 
and  Boccace,  I  resolved  to  join  them  in  my  present  work,  to  which 
I  have  added  some  original  papers  of  my  own,  which,  whether 
they  are  equal  or  inferior  to  my  other  poems,  an  author  is  the  most 
improper  judge;  and  therefore  I  leave  them  wholly  to  the  mercy 
of  the  reader.  I  will  hope  the  best,  that  they  will  not  be  con- 
demned; but  if  they  should,  I  have  the  excuse  of  an  old  gentle- 
man, who,  mounting  on  horseback  before  some  ladies,  when  I 
was  present,  got  up  somewhat  heavily,  but  desired  of  the  fair 
spectators  that  they  would  count  four-score-and-eight  before  they 
judged  him.  By  the  mercy  of  God,  I  am  already  come  within 
twenty  years  of  his  number,  a  cripple  in  my  limbs ;  but  what  decays 
are  in  my  mind,  the  reader  must  determine.  I  think  myself  as 
vigorous  as  ever  in  the  faculties  of  my  soul,  excepting  only  my 
memory,  which  is  not  impaired  to  any  great  degree ;  and  if  I  lose 
not  more  of  it,  I  have  no  great  reason  to  complain.  What  judg- 
ment I  had,  increases  rather  than  diminishes;  and  thoughts, 
such  as  they  are,  come  crowding  in  so  fast  upon  me,  that  my  only 
difficulty  is  to  choose  or  to  reject;  to  run  them  into  verse,  or  to 
give  them  the  other  harmony  of  prose.  I  have  so  long  studied 
and  practised  both,  that  they  are  grown  into  a  habit,  and  become 
familiar  to  me.  In  short,  though  I  may  lawfully  plead  some  part 
of  the  old  gentleman's  excuse,  yet  I  will  reserve  it  till  I  think  I 
have  greater  need,  and  ask  no  grains  of  allowance  for  the  faults 


1 84  JOHN   DRY  DEN 

of  this  my  present  work,  but  those  which  are  given  of  course  to 
human  frailty.  I  will  not  trouble  my  reader  with  the  shortness 
of  time  in  which  I  writ  it,  or  the  several  intervals  of  sickness. 
They  who  think  too  well  of  their  own  performances,  are  apt  to 
boast  in  their  prefaces  how  little  time  their  works  have  cost  them, 
and  what  other  business  of  more  importance  interfered;  but  the 
reader  will  be  as  apt  to  ask  the  question,  why  they  allowed  not  a 
longer  time  to  make  their  works  more  perfect?  and  why  they 
had  so  despicable  an  opinion  of  their  judges,  as  to  thrust  their 
indigested  stuff  upon  them,  as  if  they  deserved  no  better  ? 

With  this  account  of  my  present  undertaking,  I  conclude  the 
first  part  of  this  discourse:  in  the  second  part,  as  at  a  second 
sitting,  though  I  alter  not  the  draught,  I  must  touch  the  same 
features  over  again,  and  change  the  dead  colouring  of  the  whole. 
In  general,  I  will  only  say,  that  I  have  written  nothing  which 
savours  of  immorality  or  profaneness;  at  least,  I  am  not  con- 
scious to  myself  of  any  such  intention.  If  there  happen  to  be 
found  an  irreverent  expression,  or  a  thought  too  wanton,  they  are 
crept  into  my  verses  through  my  inadvertency;  if  the  searchers 
find  any  in  the  cargo,  let  them  be  staved  or  forfeited,  like  con- 
trabanded goods;  at  least,  let  their  authors  be  answerable  for 
them,  as  being  but  imported  merchandise,  and  not  of  my  own 
manufacture.  On  the  other  side,  I  have  endeavoured  to  choose 
such  fables,  both  ancient  and  modern,  as  contain  in  each  of  them 
some  instructive  moral,  which  I  could  prove  by  induction,  but 
the  way  is  tedious;  and  they  leap  foremost  into  sight,  without 
the  reader's  trouble  of  looking  after  them.  I  wish  I  could  affirm, 
with  a  safe  conscience,  that  I  had  taken  the  same  care  in  all  my 
former  writings;  for  it  must  be  owned,  that  supposing  verses 
are  never  so  beautiful  or  pleasing,  yet  if  they  contain  anything 
which  shocks  religion,  or  good  manners,  they  are  at  best  what 
Horace  says  of  good  numbers  without  good  sense.  Versus  inopes 
rerum,  nugccque  canorce}  Thus  far,  I  hope,  I  am  right  in  court, 
without  renouncing  my  other  right  of  self-defence,  where  I  have 
been  wrongfully  accused,  and  my  sense  wire-drawn  into  blas- 
phemy or  bawdry,  as  it  has  often  been  by  a  religious  lawyer,  in 
a  late  pleading  against  the  stage;  in  which  he  mixes  truth  with 
falsehood,  and  has  not  forgotten  the  old  rule  of  calumniating 
strongly,  that  something  may  remain. 

1  [Verses  barren  of  ideas,  and  songs  of  no  account.] 


PREFACE  TO   THE  FABLES  185 

I  resume  the  thrid  of  my  discourse  with  the  first  of  my  transla- 
tions, which  was  the  first  Iliad  of  Homer.  If  it  shall  please  God 
to  give  me  longer  life,  and  moderate  health,  my  intentions  are  to 
translate  the  whole  Ilias ;  provided  still  that  I  meet  with  those 
encouragements  from  the  public,  which  may  enable  me  to  proceed 
in  my  undertaking  with  some  cheerfulness.  And  this  I  dare 
assure  the  world  beforehand,  that  I  have  found,  by  trial,  Homer 
a  more  pleasing  task  than  Virgil,  though  I  say  not  the  translation 
will  be  less  laborious;  for  the  Grecian  is  more  according  to  my 
genius  than  the  Latin  poet.  In  the  works  of  the  two  authors 
we  may  read  their  manners  and  inclinations,  which  are  wholly 
different.  Virgil  was  of  a  quiet,  sedate  temper;  Homer  was 
violent,  impetuous,  and  full  of  fire.  The  chief  talent  of  Virgil 
was  propriety  of  thoughts,  and  ornament  of  words;  Homer  was 
rapid  in  his  thoughts,  and  took  all  the  liberties,  both  of  numbers 
and  of  expressions,  which  his  language,  and  the  age  in  which  he 
lived,  allowed  him.  Homer's  invention  was  more  copious,  Virgil's 
more  confined ;  so  that  if  Homer  had  not  led  the  way,  it  was  not 
in  Virgil  to  have  begun  heroic  poetry;  for  nothing  can  be  more 
evident,  than  that  the  Roman  poem  is  but  the  second  part  of  the 
Ilias ;  a  continuation  of  the  same  story,  and  the  persons  already 
formed.  The  manners  of  /Eneas  are  those  of  Hector  superadded 
to  those  which  Homer  gave  him.  The  adventures  of  Ulysses 
in  the  Odysseis  are  imitated  in  the  first  six  books  of  Virgil's  Mneis; 
and  though  the  accidents  are  not  the  same  (which  would  have 
argued  him  of  a  servile  copying,  and  total  barrenness  of  invention), 
yet  the  seas  were  the  same  in  which  both  the  heroes  wandered; 
and  Dido  cannot  be  denied  to  be  the  poetical  daughter  of  Calypso. 
The  six  latter  books  of  Virgil's  poem  are  the  four  and  twenty 
Iliads  contracted ;  a  quarrel  occasioned  by  a  lady,  a  single  combat, 
battles  fought,  and  a  town  besieged.  I  say  not  this  in  derogation 
to  Virgil,  neither  do  I  contradict  anything  which  I  have  formerly 
said  in  his  just  praise :  for  his  episodes  are  almost  wholly  of  his  own 
invention ;  and  the  form  which  he  has  given  to  the  telling,  makes 
the  tale  his  own,  even  though  the  original  story  had  been  the 
same.  But  this  proves,  however,  that  Homer  taught  Virgil  to 
design;  and  if  invention  be  the  first  virtue  of  an  epic  poet,  then 
the  Latin  poem  can  only  be  allowed  the  second  place.  Mr. 
Hobbes,  in  the  preface  to  his  own  bald  translation  of  the  Ilias 
(studying  poetry  as  he  did  mathematics,  when  it  was  too  late), 
Mr.  Hobbes,  I  say,  begins  the  praise  of  Homer  where  he  should 


l86  JOHN   DRY  DEN 

have  ended  it.  He  tells  us  that  the  first  beauty  of  an  epic  poem 
consists  in  diction,  that  is,  in  the  choice  of  words,  and  harmony 
of  numbers.  Now  the  words  are  the  colouring  of  the  work,  which 
in  the  order  of  nature  is  the  last  to  be  considered.  The  design, 
the  disposition,  the  manners,  and  the  thoughts  are  all  before  it: 
where  any  of  those  are  wanting  or  imperfect,  so  much  wants  or 
is  imperfect  in  the  imitation  of  human  life;  which  is  in  the  very 
definition  of  a  poem.  Words,  indeed,  like  glaring  colours,  are 
the  first  beauties  that  arise  and  strike  the  sight :  but  if  the  draught 
be  false  or  lame,  the  figures  ill-disposed,  the  manners  obscure 
or  inconsistent,  or  the  thoughts  unnatural,  then  the  finest  colours 
are  but  daubing,  and  the  piece  is  a  beautiful  monster  at  the  best. 
Neither  Virgil  nor  Homer  were  deficient  in  any  of  the  former 
beauties;  but  in  this  last,  which  is  expression,  the  Roman  poet 
is  at  least  equal  to  the  Grecian,  as  I  have  said  elsewhere;  supply- 
ing the  poverty  of  his  language  by  his  musical  ear,  and  by  his 
dihgence. 

But  to  return:  our  two  great  poets,  being  so  different  in  their 
tempers,  one  choleric  and  sanguine,  the  other  phlegmatic  and 
melancholic;  that  which  makes  them  excel  in  their  several  ways 
is,  that  each  of  them  has  followed  his  own  natural  inclination, 
as  well  in  forming  the  design,  as  in  the  execution  of  it.  The 
very  heroes  show  their  authors:  Achilles  is  hot,  impatient,  re- 
vengeful, etc.,  Impiger,  iracundus,  inexorabilis ,  acer,  eic}  /Eneas 
patient,  considerate,  careful  of  his  people,  and  merciful  to  his 
enemies;  ever  submissive  to  the  will  of  heaven  —  quo  fata  trahnnt, 
retrahuntque,  sequamur?  I  could  please  myself  with  enlarging 
on  this  subject,  but  am  forced  to  defer  it  to  a  fitter  time.  From 
all  I  have  said  I  will  only  draw  this  inference,  that  the  action 
of  Homer  being  more  full  of  vigour  than  that  of  Virgil,  according 
to  the  temper  of  the  writer,  is  of  consequence  more  pleasing  to 
the  reader.  One  warms  you  by  degrees;  the  other  sets  you  on 
fire  all  at  once,  and  never  intermits  its  heat.  'Tis  the  same 
difference  which  Longinus  makes  betwixt  the  effects  of  eloquence 
in  Demosthenes  and  Tully;  one  persuades,  the  other  commands. 
You  never  cool  while  you  read  Homer,  even  not  in  the  second 
book  (a  graceful  flattery  to  his  countrymen);  but  he  hastens 
from  the  ships,  and  concludes  not  that  book  till  he  has  made  you 

'  [Energetic,  choleric,  inexorable,  violent.] 

2  [Wherever  the  fates  lead  us  back  and  forth,  let  us  follow.] 


PREFACE  TO   THE  FABLES  187 

an  amends  by  the  violent  playing  of  a  new  machine.  From 
thence  he  hurries  on  his  action  with  variety  of  events,  and  ends 
it  in  less  compass  than  two  months.  This  vehemence  of  his, 
I  confess,  is  more  suitable  to  my  temper;  and  therefore  I  have 
translated  his  first  book  with  greater  pleasure  than  any  part  of 
Virgil;  but  it  was  not  a  pleasure  without  pains.  The  continual 
agitations  of  the  spirits  must  needs  be  a  weakening  of  any  consti- 
tution, especially  in  age;  and  many  pauses  are  required  for  re- 
freshment betwixt  the  heats ;  the  Iliad  of  itself  being  a  third  part 
longer  than  all  Virgil's  works  together. 

This  is  what  I  thought  needful  in  this  place  to  say  of  Homer. 
I  proceed  to  Ovid  and  Chaucer,  considering  the  former  only  in 
relation  to  the  latter.  With  Ovid  ended  the  golden  age  of  the 
Roman  tongue;  from  Chaucer  the  purity  of  the  English  tongue 
began.  The  manners  of  the  poets  were  not  unlike :  both  of  them 
were  well-bred,  well-natured,  amorous,  and  libertine,  at  least  in 
their  writings,  it  may  be  also  in  their  lives.  Their  studies  were 
the  same,  philosophy  and  philology.  Both  of  them  were  known 
in  astronomy,  of  which  Ovid's  books  of  the  Roman  Feasts,  and 
Chaucer's  Treatise  of  the  Astrolabe,  are  sufficient  witnesses.  But 
Chaucer  was  likewise  an  astrologer,  as  were  Virgil,  Horace, 
Persius,  and  Manilius.  Both  writ  with  wonderful  facility  and 
clearness;  neither  were  great  inventors;  for  Ovid  only  copied 
the  Grecian  fables,  and  most  of  Chaucer's  stories  were  taken 
from  his  Italian  contemporaries,  or  their  predecessors.  Boccace 
his  Decameron  was  first  published,  and  from  thence  our  English- 
man has  borrowed  many  of  his  Canterbury  Tales;  yet  that  of 
Palamon  and  Arcite  was  written  in  all  probability  by  some  Italian 
wit  in  a  former  age,  as  I  shall  prove  hereafter.  The  tale  of  Grizild 
was  the  invention  of  Petrarch;  by  him  sent  to  Boccace,  from 
whom  it  came  to  Chaucer.  Troilus  and  Cressida  was  also  written 
by  a  Lombard  author,  but  much  amplified  by  our  English  trans- 
lator, as  well  as  beautified;  the  genius  of  our  countrymen  in 
general  being  rather  to  improve  an  invention  than  to  invent  them- 
selves, as  is  evident  not  only  in  our  poetry,  but  in  many  of  our 
manufactures.  I  find  I  have  anticipated  already,  and  taken  up 
from  Boccace  before  I  come  to  him;  but  there  is  so  much  less 
behind ;  and  I  am  of  the  temper  of  most  kings,  who  love  to  be  in 
debt,  are  all  for  present  money,  no  matter  how  they  pay  it  after- 
wards ;  besides,  the  nature  of  a  preface  is  rambling,  never  wholly 
out  of  the  way,  nor  in  it.     This  I  have  learned  from  the  practice 


1 88  JOHN   DRY  DEN 

of  honest  Montaigne,  and  return  at  my  pleasure  to  Ovid  and 
Chaucer,  of  whom  I  have  httle  more  to  say. 

Both  of  them  buik  on  the  inventions  of  other  men;  yet  since 
Chaucer  had  something  of  his  own,  as  the  Wife  of  Bath's  Tale, 
The  Cock  and  the  Fox,  which  I  have  translated,  and  some  others, 
I  may  justly  give  our  countryman  the  precedence  in  that  part,  since 
I  can  remember  nothing  of  Ovid  which  was  wholly  his.  Both 
of  them  understood  the  manners ;  under  which  name  I  compre- 
hend the  passions,  and,  in  a  larger  sense,  the  descriptions  of 
persons,  and  their  very  habits.  For  an  example,  I  see  Baucis 
and  Philemon  as  perfectly  before  me,  as  if  some  ancient  painter 
had  drawn  them;  and  all  the  pilgrims  in  the  Canterbury  Tales, 
their  humours,  their  features,  and  the  very  dress,  as  distinctly 
as  if  I  had  supped  with  them  at  the  Tabard  in  Southwark.  Yet 
even  there  too  the  figures  in  Chaucer  are  much  more  lively,  and 
set  in  a  better  light;  which  though  I  have  not  time  to  prove,  yet 
I  appeal  to  the  reader,  and  am  sure  he  will  clear  me  from  partiality. 
The  thoughts  and  words  remain  to  be  considered  in  the  compari- 
son of  the  two  poets;  and  I  have  saved  myself  one  half  of  that 
labour,  by  owning  that  Ovid  lived  when  the  Roman  tongue  was 
in  its  meridian,  Chaucer  in  the  dawning  of  our  language;  there- 
fore that  part  of  the  comparison  stands  not  on  an  equal  foot, 
any  more  than  the  diction  of  Ennius  and  Ovid,  or  of  Chaucer 
and  our  present  English.  The  words  are  given  up  as  a  post  not 
to  be  defended  in  our  poet,  because  he  wanted  the  modern  art 
of  fortifying.  The  thoughts  remain  to  be  considered;  and  they 
are  to  be  measured  only  by  their  propriety,  that  is,  as  they  flow 
more  or  less  naturally  from  the  persons  described,  on  such  and 
such  occasions.  The  vulgar  judges,  which  are  nine  parts  in  ten 
of  all  nations,  who  call  conceits  and  jingles  wit,  who  see  Ovid  full 
of  them,  and  Chaucer  altogether  without  them,  will  think  me 
little  less  than  mad,  for  preferring  the  Englishman  to  the  Roman; 
yet,  with  their  leave,  I  must  presume  to  say,  that  the  things  they 
admire  are  only  glittering  trifles,  and  so  far  from  being  witty, 
that  in  a  serious  poem  they  are  nauseous,  because  they  are  un- 
natural. Would  any  man,  who  is  ready  to  die  for  love,  describe 
his  passion  like  Narcissus  ?  Would  he  think  of  inopcm  me  copia 
fecit,^  and  a  dozen  more  of  such  expressions,  poured  on  the  neck 
of  one  another,  and  signifying  all  the  same  thing?  If  this  were 
wit,  was  this  a  time  to  be  witty,  when  the  poor  wretch  was  in  the 

'  [Abundance  has  made  me  poor.] 


PREFACE  TO  THE  FABLES  189 

agony  of  death?  This  is  just  John  Littlewit  in  Bartholomeiv 
Fair,  who  had  a  conceit  (as  he  tells  you)  left  him  in  his  misery; 
a  miserable  conceit.  On  these  occasions  the  poet  should  endeav- 
our to  raise  pity ;  but  instead  of  this,  Ovid  is  tickling  you  to  laugh. 
Virgil  never  made  use  of  such  machines,  when  he  was  moving 
you  to  commiserate  the  death  of  Dido :  he  would  not  destroy 
what  he  was  building.  Chaucer  makes  Arcite  violent  in  his  love, 
and  unjust  in  the  pursuit  of  it ;  yet  when  he  came  to  die,  he  made 
him  think  more  reasonably:  he  repents  not  of  his  love,  for  that 
had  altered  his  character,  but  acknowledges  the  injustice  of  his 
proceedings,  and  resigns  Emilia  to  Palamon.  What  would  Ovid 
have  done  on  this  occasion  ?  He  would  certainly  have  made 
Arcite  witty  on  his  death-bed.  He  had  complained  he  was  farther 
off  from  possession  by  being  so  near,  and  a  thousand  such  boyisms, 
which  Chaucer  rejected  as  below  the  dignity  of  the  subject.  They, 
who  think  otherwise,  would  by  the  same  reason  prefer  Lucan 
and  Ovid  to  Homer  and  Virgil,  and  Martial  to  all  four  of  them. 
As  for  the  turn  of  words,  in  which  Ovid  particularly  excels  all 
poets,  they  are  sometimes  a  fault,  and  sometimes  a  beauty,  as  they 
are  used  properly  or  improperly;  but  in  strong  passions  always 
to  be  shunned,  because  passions  are  serious,  and  will  admit  no 
playing.  The  French  have  a  high  value  for  them ;  and,  I  confess, 
they  are  often  what  they  call  delicate,  when  they  are  introduced 
with  judgment;  but  Chaucer  writ  with  more  simplicity,  and 
followed  nature  more  closely,  than  to  use  them.  I  have  thus 
far,  to  the  best  of  my  knowledge,  been  an  upright  judge  betwixt 
the  parties  in  competition,  not  meddling  with  the  design  nor  the 
disposition  of  it,  because  the  design  was  not  their  own,  and  in  the 
disposing  of  it  they  were  equal.  It  remains  that  I  say  somewhat 
of  Chaucer  in  particular. 

In  the  first  place,  as  he  is  the  father  of  English  poetry,  so  I  hold 
him  in  the  same  degree  of  veneration  as  the  Grecians  held  Homer 
or  the  Romans  Virgil:  he  is  a  perpetual  fountain  of  good  sense, 
learned  in  all  sciences,  and  therefore  speaks  properly  on  all  sub- 
jects; as  he  knew  what  to  say,  so  he  knows  also  when  to  leave 
off,  a  continence  which  is  practised  by  few  writers,  and  scarcely 
by  any  of  the  ancients,  excepting  Virgil  and  Horace.  One  of  our 
late  great  poets  is  sunk  in  his  reputation,  because  he  could  never 
forgive  any  conceit  which  came  in  his  way,  but  swept  like  a  drag- 
net great  and  small.  There  was  plenty  enough,  but  the  dishes 
were  ill-sorted;    whole  pyramids  of  sweetmeats   for  boys  and 


IQO  JOHN  DRV  DEN 

women,  but  little  of  solid  meat  for  men:  all  this  proceeded  not 
from  any  want  of  knowledge,  but  of  judgment;  neither  did  he 
want  that  in  discerning  the  beauties  and  faults  of  other  poets, 
but  only  indulged  himself  in  the  luxury  of  writing,  and  per- 
haps knew  it  was  a  fault,  but  hoped  the  reader  would  not  find 
it.  For  this  reason,  though  he  must  always  be  thought  a 
great  poet,  he  is  no  longer  esteemed  a  good  writer;  and 
for  ten  impressions,  which  his  works  have  had  in  so  many 
successive  years,  yet  at  present  a  hundred  books  are  scarcely 
purchased  once  a  twelve-month;  for  as  my  last  Lord  Roch- 
ester said,  though  somewhat  profanely,  "Not  being  of  God, 
he  could  not  stand." 

Chaucer  followed  nature  everywhere,  but  was  never  so  bold  to  go 
beyond  her;  and  there  is  a  great  difference  of  being  poeta  and 
nimis  poeta,^  if  we  believe  Catullus,  as  much  as  betwixt  a  modest 
behaviour  and  affectation.  The  verse  of  Chaucer,  I  confess,  is  not 
harmonious  to  us,  but  'tis  like  the  eloquence  of  one  whom  Tacitus 
commends,  it  was  aiiribus  istius  temporis  accommodata:~  they 
who  lived  with  him,  and  some  time  after  him,  thought  it  musical ; 
and  it  continues  so  even  in  our  judgment,  if  compared  with  the 
numbers  of  Lydgate  and  Gower,  his  contemporaries ;  there  is  the 
rude  sweetness  of  a  Scotch  tune  in  it,  which  is  natural  and  pleasing, 
though  not  perfect.  'Tis  true  I  cannot  go  so  far  as  he  who  pub- 
lished the  last  edition  of  him ;  for  he  would  make  us  believe  the 
fault  is  in  our  ears,  and  that  there  were  really  ten  syllables  in  a  verse 
where  we  find  but  nine,  but  this  opinion  is  not  worth  confuting, 
it  is  so  gross  and  obvious  an  error  that  common  sense  (which  is  a 
rule  in  everything  but  matters  of  faith  and  revelation)  must  con- 
vince the  reader  that  equality  of  numbers  in  every  verse,  which  we 
call  heroic,  was  either  not  known,  or  not  always  practised,  in  Chau- 
cer's age.  It  were  an  easy  matter  to  produce  some  thousands  of 
his  verses,  which  are  lame  for  want  of  half  a  foot,  and  sometimes 
a  whole  one,  and  which  no  pronunciation  can  make  otherwise. 
We  can  only  say  that  he  lived  in  the  infancy  of  our  poetry,  and  that 
nothing  is  brought  to  perfection  at  the  first.  We  must  be  children 
before  we  grow  men.  There  was  an  Ennius,  and  in  process  of 
time  a  Lucilius  and  a  Lucretius,  before  Virgil  and  Horace;  even 
after  Chaucer  there  was  a  Spenser,  a  Harrington,  a  Fairfax,  before 
Waller  and  Denham  were  in  being;    and  our  numbers  were  in 

'  [Too  much  of  a  poet.]  ^  [Tempered  to  the  ear  of  the  very  times.] 


PREFACE  TO   THE  FABLES  I9I 

their  nonage  till  these  last  appeared.  I  need  say  little  of  his 
parentage,  life,  and  fortunes:  they  are  to  be  found  at  large  in  all 
the  editions  of  his  works.  He  was  employed  abroad,  and  favoured 
by  Edward  the  Third,  Richard  the  Second,  and  Henry  the  Fourth, 
and  was  poet,  as  I  suppose,  to  all  three  of  them.  In  Richard's 
time,  I  doubt,  he  was  a  little  dipt  in  the  rebellion  of  the  Commons, 
and  being  brother-in-law  to  John  of  Gaunt,  it  was  no  wonder  if  he 
followed  the  fortunes  of  that  family,  and  was  well  with  Henry  the 
Fourth  when  he  had  deposed  his  predecessor.  Neither  is  it  to  be 
admired  that  Henry,  who  was  a  wise  as  well  as  a  valiant  prince, 
who  claimed  by  succession,  and  was  sensible  that  his  title  was  not 
sound,  but  was  rightfully  in  Mortimer,  who  had  married  the  heir 
of  York;  it  was  not  to  be  admired,  I  say,  if  that  great  politician 
should  be  pleased  to  have  the  greatest  wit  of  those  times  in  his 
interests,  and  to  be  the  trumpet  of  his  praises.  Augustus  had  given 
him  the  example,  by  the  advice  of  Mascenas,  who  recommended 
Virgil  and  Horace  to  him,  whose  praises  helped  to  make  him  popu- 
lar while  he  was  alive,  and  after  his  death  have  made  him  precious 
to  posterity.  As  for  the  religion  of  our  poet,  he  seems  to  have  some 
little  bias  towards  the  opinions  of  Wickliff,  after  John  of  Gaunt  his 
patron;  somewhat  of  which  appears  in  the  tale  of  Piers  Plowman: 
yet  I  cannot  blame  him  for  inveighing  so  sharply  against  the  vices 
of  the  clergy  in  his  age;  their  pride,  their  ambition,  their  pomp, 
their  avarice,  their  worldly  interest  deserved  the  lashes  which  he 
gave  them,  both  in  that  and  in  most  of  his  Canterbury  Tales: 
neither  has  his  contemporary  Boccace  spared  them.  Yet  both 
these  poets  lived  in  much  esteem  with  good  and  holy  men  in  orders ; 
for  the  scandal  which  is  given  by  particular  priests,  reflects  not 
on  the  sacred  function.  Chaucer's  Monk,  his  Canon,  and  his  Friar 
took  not  from  the  character  of  his  Good  Parson.  A  satirical  poet 
is  the  check  of  the  laymen  on  bad  priests.  We  are  only  to  take  care 
that  we  involve  not  the  innocent  with  the  guilty  in  the  same  con- 
demnation. The  good  cannot  be  too  much  honoured,  nor  the  bad 
too  coarsely  used ;  for  the  corruption  of  the  best  becomes  the  worst. 
When  a  clergyman  is  whipped  his  gown  is  first  taken  off,  by  which 
the  dignity  of  his  order  is  secured ;  if  he  be  wrongfully  accused,  he 
has  his  action  of  slander ;  and  it  is  at  the  poet's  peril  if  he  transgress 
the  law.  But  they  will  tell  us  that  all  kind  of  satire,  though  never 
so  well-deserved  by  particular  priests,  yet  brings  the  whole  order 
into  contempt.  Is,  then,  the  peerage  of  England  anything  dis- 
honoured when  a  peer  suffers  for  his  treason  ?     If  he  be  libelled, 


192  JOHN   DRY  DEN 

or  any  way  defamed,  he  has  his  Scandalum  Magnatnm  ^  to  punish 
the  offender.  They  who  use  this  kind  of  argument  seem  to  be 
conscious  to  themselves  of  somewhat  which  has  deserved  the  poet's 
lash,  and  are  less  concerned  for  their  public  capacity  than  for  their 
private;  at  least  there  is  pride  at  the  bottom  of  their  reasoning. 
If  the  faults  of  men  in  orders  are  only  to  be  judged  among  them- 
selves, they  are  all  in  some  sort  parties;  for,  since  they  say  the 
honour  of  their  order  is  concerned  in  every  member  of  it,  how  can 
we  be  sure  that  they  will  be  impartial  judges  ?  How  far  I  may  be 
allowed  to  speak  my  opinion  in  this  case  I  know  not,  but  I  am  sure 
a  dispute  of  this  nature  caused  mischief  in  abundance  betwixt 
a  King  of  England  and  an  Archbishop  of  Canterbury;  one  stand- 
ing up  for  the  laws  of  his  land,  and  the  other  for  the  honour  (as  he 
called  it)  of  God's  Church;  which  ended  in  the  murder  of  the 
prelate,  and  in  the  whipping  of  his  majesty  from  post  to  pillar  for 
his  penance.  The  learned  and  ingenious  Dr.  Drake  has  saved 
me  the  labour  of  inquiring  into  the  esteem  and  reverence  which  the 
priests  have  had  of  old ;  and  I  would  rather  extend  than  diminish 
any  part  of  it :  yet  I  must  needs  say,  that  when  a  priest  provokes 
me  without  any  occasion  given  him,  I  have  no  reason,  unless  it  be 
the  charity  of  a  Christian,  to  forgive  him.  Prior  laesit  ^  is  justifica- 
tion sufficient  in  the  civil  law.  If  I  answer  him  in  his  own  language, 
self-defence,  I  am  sure,  must  be  allowed  me;  and  if  I  carry  it 
farther,  even  to  a  sharp  recrimination,  somewhat  may  be  indulged 
to  human  frailty.  Yet  my  resentment  has  not  wrought  so  far,  but 
that  I  have  followed  Chaucer,  in  his  character  of  a  holy  man,  and 
have  enlarged  on  that  subject  with  some  pleasure,  reserving  to 
myself  the  right,  if  I  shall  think  fit  hereafter,  to  describe  another  sort 
of  priests,  such  as  are  more  easily  to  be  found  than  the  Good  Par- 
son ;  such  as  have  given  the  last  blow  to  Christianity  in  this  age, 
by  a  practice  so  contrary  to  their  doctrine.  But  this  will  keep  cold 
till  another  time.  In  the  meanwhile,  I  take  up  Chaucer  where  I 
left  him. 

He  must  have  been  a  man  of  a  most  wonderful  comprehensive 
nature,  because,  as  it  has  been  truly  observed  of  him,  he  has  taken 
into  the  compass  of  his  Canterbury  Tales  the  various  manners  and 
humours  (as  we  now  call  them)  of  the  whole  English  nation,  in  his 
age.     Not  a  single  character  has  escaped  him.     All  his  pilgrims 

*  f'ln  law,  the  offense  of  speaking  slanderously  or  in  defamation  of  high 
personacjes  (magnates)  of  the  realm,  as  temporal  and  spiritual  peers,  judges,  and 
other  high  officers."  — Century  Dictionary.] 

-  [He  did  tlie  llrst  injury.] 


PREFACE  TO    THE  FABLES  I93 

are  severally  distinguished  from  each  other;  and  not  only  in  their 
inclinations,  but  in  their  very  physiognomies  and  persons.  Bap- 
tista  Porta  could  not  have  described  their  natures  better  than  by 
the  marks  which  the  poet  gives  them.  The  matter  and  manner  of 
their  tales,  and  of  their  telling,  are  so  suited  to  their  different  edu- 
cations, humours,  and  callings  that  each  of  them  would  be  improper 
in  any  other  mouth.  Even  the  grave  and  serious  characters  are 
distinguished  by  their  several  sorts  of  gravity :  their  discourses  are 
such  as  belong  to  their  age,  their  calling,  and  their  breeding;  such 
as  are  becoming  of  them,  and  of  them  only.  Some  of  his  persons 
are  vicious,  and  some  virtuous;  some  are  unlearned,  or  (as  Chau- 
cer calls  them)  lewd,  and  some  are  learned.  Even  the  ribaldry 
of  the  low  characters  is  different:  the  Reeve,  the  Miller,  and  the 
Cook  are  several  men,  and  distinguished  from  each  other,  as  much 
as  the  mincing  Lady-Prioress,  and  the  broad-speaking  gap-toothed 
Wife  of  Bath.  But  enough  of  this :  there  is  such  a  variety  of  game 
springing  up  before  me,  that  I  am  distracted  in  my  choice,  and 
know  not  which  to  follow.  'Tis  sufficient  to  say,  according  to  the 
proverb,  that  here  is  God's  plenty.  We  have  our  forefathers  and 
great-grand-dames  all  before  us,  as  they  were  in  Chaucer's  days ; 
their  general  characters  are  still  remaining  in  mankind,  and  even 
in  England,  though  they  are  called  by  other  names  than  those  of 
Monks,  and  Friars,  and  Canons,  and  Lady  Abbesses,  and  Nuns; 
for  mankind  is  ever  the  same,  and  nothing  lost  out  of  nature,  though 
everything  is  altered.  May  I  have  leave  to  do  myself  the  justice 
(since  my  enemies  will  do  me  none,  and  are  so  far  from  granting 
me  to  be  a  good  poet  that  they  will  not  allow  me  so  much  as  to  be 
a  Christian,  or  a  moral  man),  may  I  have  leave,  I  say,  to  inform 
my  reader  that  I  have  confined  my  choice  to  such  tales  of  Chaucer 
as  savour  nothing  of  immodesty  ?  If  I  had  desired  more  to  please 
than  to  instruct,  the  Reeve,  the  Miller,  the  Shipman,  the  Merchant, 
the  Summoner,  and,  above  all,  the  Wife  of  Bath,  in  the  prologue 
to  her  tale,  would  have  procured  me  as  many  friends  and  readers 
as  there  are  beaux  and  ladies  of  pleasure  in  the  town.  But  I  will 
no  more  offend  against  good  manners :  I  am  sensible,  as  I  ought  to 
be,  of  the  scandal  I  have  given  by  my  loose  writings,  and  make 
what  reparation  I  am  able  by  this  public  acknowledgment.  If 
anything  of  this  nature,  or  of  profaneness,  be  crept  into  these 
poems,  I  am  so  far  from  defending  it  that  I  disown  it.  Totiini 
hoc  indictiim  volo}     Chaucer  makes  another  manner  of  apology 

^  [All  this  I  wish  unsaid.] 


194  JOHN  DRYDEN 

for  his  broad  speaking,  and  Boccace  makes  the  like;  but  I  will 
follow  neither  or  them.  Our  countryman,  in  the  end  of  his  Char- 
acters, before  the  Canterbury  Tales,  thus  excuses  the  ribaldry, 
which  is  very  gross  in  many  of  his  novels. 

But  firste,  I  pray  you  of  your  courtesy, 
That  ye  ne  arrete  it  not  my  villany, 
Though  that  I  plainly  speak  in  this  mattere 
To  tcllen  you  her  words,  and  eke  her  chere : 
Ne  though  I  speak  her  words  properly, 
For  this  ye  knowen  as  well  as  I, 
Who  shall  tellen  a  tale  after  a  man. 
He  mote  rehearse  as  nye  as  ever  he  can 
Everich  word  of  it  be  in  his  charge. 
All  speke  he,  never  so  rudely,  ne  large. 

Or  else  he  mote  tellen  his  tale  untrue, 

Or  feine  things,  or  find  words  new: 

He  may  not  spare,  altho  he  were  his  brother, 

He  mote  as  well  say  o  word  as  another. 

Christ  spake  himself  ful  broad  in  holy  writ, 

And  well  I  wot  no  villany  is  it. 

Eke  Plato  saith,  who  so  can  him  rede. 

The  words  mote  been  cousin  to  the  dede. 

Yet  if  a  man  should  have  inquired  of  Boccace  or  of  Chaucer, 
what  need  they  had  of  introducing  such  characters  where  obscene 
words  were  proper  in  their  mouths,  but  very  indecent  to  be  heard; 
I  know  not  what  answer  they  could  have  made;  for  that  reason, 
such  tales  shall  be  left  untold  by  me.  You  have  here  a  specimen 
of  Chaucer's  language,  which  is  so  obsolete,  that  his  sense  is  scarce 
to  be  understood;  and  you  have  likewise  more  than  one  example 
of  his  unequal  numbers,  which  were  mentioned  before.  Yet  many 
of  his  verses  consist  of  ten  syllables,  and  the  words  not  much  be- 
hind our  present  English :  as,  for  example,  these  two  lines,  in  the 
description  of  the  Carpenter's  young  wife :  — 

Wincing  she  was,  as  is  a  jolly  colt. 
Long  as  a  mast,  and  upright  as  a  bolt. 

I  have  almost  done  with  Chaucer,  when  I  have  answered  some 
objections  relating  to  my  present  work.  I  find  some  people  are 
offended  that  I  have  turned  these  tales  into  modern  English;  be- 
cause they  think  them  unworthy  of  my  pains,  and  look  on  Chaucer 
as  a  dry,  old-fashioned  wit,  not  worth  reviving.  I  have  often  heard 
the  late  Earl  of  Leicester  say,  that  Mr.  Cowley  himself  was  of  that 


PREFACE   TO   THE  FABLES  195 

opinion;  who,  having  read  him  over  at  my  lord's  request,  declared 
he  had  no  taste  of  him.  I  dare  not  advance  my  opinion  against  the 
judgment  of  so  great  an  author :  but  I  think  it  fair,  however,  to 
leave  the  decision  to  the  public.  Mr.  Cowley  was  too  modest  to 
set  up  for  a  dictator;  and  being  shocked  perhaps  with  his  old  style, 
never  examined  into  the  depth  of  his  good  sense.  Chaucer,  I  con- 
fess, is  a  rough  diamond,  and  must  first  be  polished,  ere  he  shines. 
I  deny  not,  hkewise,  that,  living  in  our  early  times  he  writes  not 
always  of  a  piece,  but  sometimes  mingles  trivial  things  with  those 
of  greater  moment.  Sometimes  also,  though  not  often,  he  runs 
riot,  like  Ovid,  and  knows  not  when  he  has  said  enough.  But  there 
are  more  great  wits  besides  Chaucer,  whose  fault  is  their  excess  of 
conceits,  and  those  ill  sorted.  An  author  is  not  to  write  all  he  can, 
but  only  all  he  ought.  Having  observed  this  redundancy  in  Chau- 
cer (as  it  is  an  easy  matter  for  a  man  of  ordinary  parts  to  find  a 
fault  in  one  of  greater),  I  have  not  tied  myself  to  a  literal  translation ; 
but  have  often  omitted  what  I  judged  unnecessary,  or  not  of  dig- 
nity enough  to  appear  in  the  company  of  better  thoughts.  I  have 
presumed  farther,  in  some  places,  and  added  somewhat  of  my  own 
where  I  thought  my  author  was  deficient,  and  had  not  given  his 
thoughts  their  true  lustre,  for  want  of  words  in  the  beginning  of  our 
language.  And  to  this  I  was  the  more  emboldened,  because  (if  I 
may  be  permitted  to  say  it  of  myself)  I  found  I  had  a  soul  congenial 
to  his,  and  that  I  had  been  conversant  in  the  same  studies.  An- 
other poet,  in  another  age,  may  take  the  same  liberty  with  my  writ- 
ings ;  if  at  least  they  live  long  enough  to  deserve  correction.  It  was 
also  necessary  sometimes  to  restore  the  sense  of  Chaucer,  which  was 
lost  or  mangled  in  the  errors  of  the  press :  let  this  example  suffice 
at  present;  in  the  story  of  Palamon  and  Arcite,  where  the  temple 
of  Diana  is  described,  you  find  these  verses,  in  all  the  editions  of  our 
author : — 

There  saw  I  Dane  turned  into  a  tree, 

I  mean  not  the  goddess  Diane, 

But  Venus  daughter,  which  that  hight  Dane: 

Which,  after  a  little  consideration,  I  knew  was  to  be  reformed  into 
this  sense,  that  Daphne,  the  daughter  of  Peneus,  was  turned  into 
a  tree.  I  durst  not  make  thus  bold  with  Ovid,  lest  some  future 
Milbourn  should  arise,  and  say,  I  varied  from  my  author,  because 
I  understood  him  not. 

But  there  are  other  judges  who  think  I  ought  not  to  have  trans- 
lated Chaucer  into  English,  out  of  a  quite  contrary  notion:   they 


196  JOHN   DRY  DEN 

suppose  there  is  a  certain  veneration  due  to  his  old  language; 
and  that  it  is  a  little  less  than  profanation  and  sacrilege  to  alter  it. 
They  are  farther  of  opinion,  that  somewhat  of  his  good  sense  will 
suffer  in  this  transfusion,  and  much  of  the  beauty  of  his  thoughts 
will  infallibly  be  lost,  which  appear  with  more  grace  in  their  old 
habit.  Of  this  opinion  was  that  excellent  person,  whom  I  men- 
tioned, the  late  Earl  of  Leicester,  who  valued  Chaucer  as  much  as 
Mr.  Cowley  despised  him.  My  lord  dissuaded  me  from  this  at- 
tempt (for  I  was  thinking  of  it  some  years  before  his  death),  and 
his  authority  prevailed  so  far  with  me,  as  to  defer  my  undertaking 
while  he  lived,  in  deference  to  him:  yet  my  reason  was  not  con- 
vinced with  what  he  urged  against  it.  If  the  first  end  of  a  writer 
be  to  be  understood,  then  as  his  language  grows  obsolete,  his 
thoughts  must  grow  obscure :  — 

Multa  renascentur  quae  nunc  cecidere;  cadentque, 
Quae  nunc  sunt  in  honore  vocabula  si  volet  usus 
Quem  penes  arbitrium  est  et  jus  et  norma  loquendi.' 

WTien  an  ancient  word  for  its  sound  and  significancy  deserves  to  be 
revived,  I  have  that  reasonable  veneration  for  antiquity,  to  restore 
it.  All  beyond  this  is  superstition.  Words  are  not  like  landmarks, 
so  sacred  as  never  to  be  removed;  customs  are  changed,  and  even 
statutes  are  silently  repealed,  when  the  reason  ceases  for  which  they 
were  enacted.  As  for  the  other  part  of  the  argument,  that  his 
thoughts  will  lose  of  their  original  beauty,  by  the  innovation  of 
words;  in  the  first  place,  not  only  their  beauty  but  their  being  is 
lost,  where  they  are  no  longer  understood,  which  is  the  present  case. 
I  grant  that  something  must  be  lost  in  all  transfusion,  that  is,  in 
all  translations ;  but  the  sense  will  remain,  which  would  otherwise 
be  lost,  or  at  least  be  maimed,  when  it  is  scarce  intelligible;  and 
that  but  to  a  few.  How  few  are  there  who  can  read  Chaucer,  so 
as  to  understand  him  perfectly !  And  if  perfectly,  then  with  less 
profit  and  no  pleasure.  'Tis  not  for  the  use  of  some  old  Saxon 
friends  that  I  have  taken  these  pains  with  him:  let  them  neglect 
my  version  because  they  have  no  need  of  it.  I  made  it  for  their 
sakes  who  understand  sense  and  poetry  as  well  as  they,  when  that 
poetry  and  sense  is  put  into  words  which  they  understand.  I  will 
go  farther,  and  dare  to  add,  that  what  beauties  I  lose  in  some  places, 

'  [Many  words  will  be  restored  which  now  have  fallen  out  of  use,  and  many 
words  will  pass  which  are  now  in  honor  —  if  custom  so  decrees,  in  whose  power 
is  the  rule  and  the  law  and  the  pattern  of  speaking.] 


PREFACE   TO   THE  FABLES  I97 

I  give  to  others  which  had  them  not  originally ;  but  in  this  I  may  be 
partial  to  myself;  let  the  reader  judge,  and  I  submit  to  his  decision. 
Yet  I  think  I  have  just  occasion  to  complain  of  them,  who,  because 
they  understand  Chaucer,  would  deprive  the  greater  part  of  their 
countrymen  of  the  same  advantage,  and  hoard  him  up,  as  misers 
do  their  grahdam  gold,  only  to  look  on  it  themselves,  and  hinder 
others  from  making  use  of  it.  In  sum,  I  seriously  protest,  that  no 
man  ever  had,  or  can  have,  a  greater  veneration  for  Chaucer 
than  myself.  I  have  translated  some  part  of  his  works,  only  that 
I  might  perpetuate  his  memory,  or  at  least  refresh  it,  amongst  my 
countrymen.  If  I  have  altered  him  anyw^here  for  the  better,  I 
must  at  the  same  time  acknowledge  that  I  could  have  done  nothing 
without  him :  Facile  est  inventis  addere,^  is  no  great  commendation ; 
and  I  am  not  so  vain  to  think  I  have  deserved  a  greater.  I  will 
conclude  what  I  have  to  say  of  him  singly,  with  this  one  remark : 
a  lady  of  my  acquaintance,  who  keeps  a  kind  of  correspondence 
with  some  authors  of  the  fair  sex  in  France,  has  been  informed 
by  them  that  Mademoiselle  de  Scudery,  who  is  as  old  as  Sibyl, 
and  inspired  like  her  by  the  same  god  of  poetry,  is  at  this  time  trans- 
lating Chaucer  into  modern  French.  From  which  I  gather  that 
he  has  been  formerly  translated  into  the  old  Provenf  al ;  for  how  she 
should  come  to  understand  old  English  I  know  not.  But  the  matter 
of  fact  being  true,  it  makes  me  think  that  there  is  something  in  if  like 
fatality;  that,  after  certain  periods  of  time,  the  fame  and  memory 
of  great  wits  should  be  renewed,  as  Chaucer  is  both  in  France  and 
England.  If  this  be  wholly  chance,  'tis  extraordinary,  and  I  dare 
not  call  it  more  for  fear  of  being  taxed  with  superstition. 

Boccace  comes  last  to  be  considered,  who,  living  in  the  same  age 
with  Chaucer,  had  the  same  genius,  and  followed  the  same  studies. 
Both  writ  novels,  and  each  of  them  cultivated  his  mother  tongue. 
But  the  greatest  resemblance  of  our  two  modern  authors  being  in 
their  familiar  style,  and  pleasing  way  of  relating  comical  adven- 
tures, I  may  pass  it  over,  because  I  have  translated  nothing  from 
Boccace  of  that  nature.  In  the  serious  part  of  poetry,  the  advan- 
tage is  wholly  on  Chaucer's  side ;  for  though  the  Englishman  has 
borrowed  many  tales  from  the  Italian,  yet  it  appears  that  those  of 
Boccace  were  not  generally  of  his  own  making,  but  taken  from 
authors  of  former  ages,  and  by  him  only  modelled;  so  that  what 
there  was  of  invention  in  either  of  them  may  be  judged  equal.  But 
Chaucer  has  refined  on  Boccace,  and  has  mended  the  stories,  which 

*  [It  is  easy  to  add  to  what  is  already  there.] 


198  JOHN  DRY  DEN 

he  has  borrowed,  in  his  way  of  telling;  though  prose  allows  more 
liberty  of  thought,  and  the  expression  is  more  easy  when  unconfined 
by  numbers.  Our  countryman  carries  weight,  and  yet  wins  the 
race  at  disadvantage.  I  desire  not  the  reader  should  take  my  word, 
and  therefore  I  will  set  two  of  their  discourses  on  the  same  subject, 
in  the  same  Hght,  for  every  man  to  judge  betwixt  them.  I  trans- 
lated Chaucer  first,  and  amongst  the  rest  pitched  on  The  Wife  of 
Bathes  Tale  —  not  daring,  as  I  have  said,  to  adventure  on  her  Pro- 
logue, because  it  is  too  licentious.  There  Chaucer  introduces  an 
old  woman  of  mean  parentage,  whom  a  youthful  knight  of  noble 
blood  was  forced  to  marry,  and  consequently  loathed  her.  The 
crone  being  in  bed  with  him  on  the  wedding-night,  and  finding  his 
aversion,  endeavours  to  win  his  affection  by  reason,  and  speaks  a 
good  word  for  herself  (as  who  could  blame  her  ?)  in  hope  to  mollify 
the  sullen  bridegroom.  She  takes  her  topics  from  the  benefits  of 
poverty,  the  advantages  of  old'age  and  ugliness,  the  vanity  of  youth, 
and  the  silly  pride  of  ancestry  and  titles  without  inherent  virtue, 
which  is  the  true  nobility.  When  I  had  closed  Chaucer  I  returned 
to  Ovid,  and  translated  some  more  of  his  fables;  and  by  this  time 
had  so  far  forgotten  The  Wife  of  Balh's  Tale  that,  when  I  took  up 
Boccace,  unawares  I  fell  on  the  same  argument  of  preferring  virtue 
to  nobility  of  blood,  and  titles,  in  the  story  of  Sigismunda,  which  I 
had  certainly  avoided  for  the  resemblance  of  the  two  discourses, 
if  my  memory  had  not  failed  me.  Let  the  reader  weigh  them  both, 
and  if  he  thinks  me  partial  to  Chaucer,  'tis  in  him  to  right  Boccace. 
I  prefer,  in  our  countryman,  far  above  all  his  other  stories,  the 
noble  poem  of  Palamon  and  Arcite,  which  is  of  the  epic  kind,  and 
perhaps  not  much  inferior  to  the  Ilias  or  the  Aineis.  The  story 
is  more  pleasing  than  either  of  them,  the  manners  as  perfect,  the 
diction  as  poetical,  the  learning  as  deep  and  various,  and  the  dis- 
position full  as  artful;  only  it  includes  a  greater  length  of  time, 
as  taking  up  seven  years  at  least;  but  Aristotle  has  left  undecided 
the  duration  of  the  action,  which  yet  is  easily  reduced  into  the  com- 
pass of  a  year  by  a  narration  of  what  preceded  the  return  of  Pala- 
mon to  Athens.  I  had  thought  for  the  honour  of  our  nation,  and 
more  particularly  for  his  whose  laurel,  though  unworthy,  I  have 
worn  after  him,  that  this  story  was  of  English  growth  and  Chau- 
cer's own;  but  I  was  undeceived  by  Boccace,  for  casually  looking 
on  the  end  of  his  seventh  Giornata,  I  found  Dioneo  (under  which 
name  he  shadows  himself)  and  Fiametta  (who  represents  his  mis- 
tress, the  natural  daughter  of  Robert,  King  of  Naples),  of  whom 


PREFACE   TO   THE  FABLES  199 

these  words  are  spoken,  Dloneo  e  Fiametta  gran  pezza  contarono 
insieme  d'Arcita,  e  di  Palamone;^  by  which  it  appears  that  this 
story  was  written  before  the  time  of  Boccace ;  but  the  name  of  its 
author  being  wholly  lost,  Chaucer  is  now  become  an  original,  and 
I  question  not  but  the  poem  has  received  many  beauties  by  passing 
through  his  noble  hands.  Besides  this  tale,  there  is  another  of  his 
own  invention,  after  the  manner  of  the  Provencals,  called  The 
Flower  and  the  Leaf,  with  which  I  was  so  particularly  pleased,  both 
for  the  invention  and  the  moral,  that  I  cannot  hinder  myself  from 
recommending  it  to  the  reader. 

As  a  corollary  to  this  preface,  in  which  I  have  done  justice  to 
others,  I  owe  somewhat  to  myself ;  not  that  I  think  it  worth  my  time 
to  enter  the  lists  with  one  Milbourn  and  one  Blackmore,  but  barely 
to  take  notice  that  such  men  there  are  who  have  written  scurrilously 
against  me  without  any  provocation.  Milbourn,  who  is  in  orders, 
pretends,  amongst  the  rest,  this  quarrel  to  me,  that  I  have  fallen 
foul  on  priesthood;  if  I  have,  I  am  only  to  ask  pardon  of  good 
priests,  and  am  afraid  his  part  of  the  reparation  will  come  to  little. 
Let  him  be  satisfied  that  he  shall  not  be  able  to  force  himself  upon 
me  for  an  adversary.  I  contemn  him  too  much  to  enter  into  com- 
petition with  him.  His  own  translations  of  Virgil  have  answered 
his  criticisms  on  mine.  If  (as  they  say,  he  has  declared  in  print) 
he  prefers  the  version  of  Ogilby  to  mine,  the  world  has  made  him  the 
same  compliment,  for  'tis  agreed,  on  all  hands,  that  he  writes  even 
below  Ogilby.  That,  you  will  say,  is  not  easily  to  be  done;  but 
what  cannot  Milbourn  bring  about  ?  I  am  satisfied,  however,  that 
while  he  and  I  live  together,  I  shall  not  be  thought  the  worst  poet 
of  the  age.  It  looks  as  if  I  had  desired  him  underhand  to  write 
so  ill  against  me;  but  upon  my  honest  word,  I  have  not  bribed  him 
to  do  me  this  service,  and  am  wholly  guiltless  of  his  pamphlet. 
'Tis  true,  I  should  be  glad  if  I  could  persuade  him  to  continue  his 
good  offices,  and  write  such  another  critique  on  anything  of  mine; 
for  I  find  by  experience  he  has  a  great  stroke  with  the  reader, 
when  he  condemns  any  of  my  poems,  to  make  the  world  have  a 
better  opinion  of  them.  He  has  taken  some  pains  with  my  poetry, 
but  nobody  will  be  persuaded  to  take  the  same  with  his.  If  I 
had  taken  to  the  church,  as  he  affirms,  but  which  was  never  in  my 
thoughts,  I  should  have  had  more  sense,  if  not  more  grace,  than  to 
have  turned  myself  out  of  my  benefice  by  writing  libels  on  my 
parishioners.     But  his  account  of  my  manners  and  my  principles 

1  [Dioneo  and  Fiametta  together  told  a  long  tale  of  Arcite  and  of  Palamon.] 


200  JOHN  DRY  DEN 

are  of  a  piece  with  his  cavils  and  his  poetry ;  and  so  I  have  done  vi^ith 
him  forever. 

As  for  the  City  Bard,  or  Knight  Physician,  I  hear  his  quarrel  to 
me  is,  that  I  was  the  author  of  Absalom  and  Achitophel,  which  he 
thinks  was  a  little  hard  on  his  fanatic  patrons  in  London. 

But  I  will  deal  the  more  civilly  with  his  two  poems,  because  noth- 
ing ill  is  to  be  spoken  of  the  dead,  and  therefore  peace  be  to  the 
Manes  of  his  Arthurs.  I  will  only  say  that  it  was  not  for  this  noble 
knight  that  I  drew  the  plan  of  an  epic  poem  on  King  Arthur  in 
my  preface  to  the  translation  of  Juvenal.  The  guardian  angels  of 
kingdoms  were  machines  too  ponderous  for  him  to  manage;  and 
therefore  he  rejected  them,  as  Dares  did  the  whirlbats  of  Eryx, 
when  they  were  thrown  before  him  by  Entellus.  Yet  from  that 
preface  he  plainly  took  his  hint ;  for  he  began  immediately  upon  his 
story,  though  he  had  the  baseness  not  to  acknowledge  his  bene- 
factor;  but  instead  of  it,  to  traduce  me  in  a  libel. 

I  shall  say  the  less  of  Mr.  Collier,  because  in  many  things  he  has 
taxed  me  justly,  and  I  have  pleaded  guilty  to  all  thoughts  and  ex- 
pressions of  mine  which  can  be  truly  argued  of  obscenity,  profane- 
ness,  or  immorality,  and  retract  them.  If  he  be  my  enemy,  let 
him  triumph;  if  he  be  my  friend,  as  I  have  given  him  no  personal 
occasion  to  be  otherwise,  he  will  be  glad  of  my  repentance.  It  be- 
comes me  not  to  draw  my  pen  in  the  defence  of  a  bad  cause  when  I 
have  so  often  drawn  it  for  a  good  one.  Yet  it  were  not  difficult 
to  prove  that  in  many  places  he  has  perverted  my  meaning  by  his 
glosses,  and  interpreted  my  words  into  blasphemy  and  bawdry, 
of  which  they  were  not  guilty.  Besides  that  he  is  too  much  given 
to  horse-play  in  his  raillery,  and  comes  to  battle  like  a  dictator  from 
the  plough.  I  will  not  say  the  zeal  of  God's  house  has  eaten  him 
up,  but  I  am  sure  it  has  devoured  some  part  of  his  good  manners 
and  civility.  It  might  also  be  doubted  whether  it  were  altogether 
zeal  which  prompted  him  to  this  rough  manner  of  proceeding;  per- 
haps it  became  not  one  of  his  function  to  rake  into  the  rubbish  of 
ancient  and  modern  plays.  A  divine  might  have  employed  his 
pains  to  better  purpose  than  in  the  nastiness  of  Plautus  and  Aris- 
tophanes, whose  examples,  as  they  excuse  not  me,  so  it  might  be 
possibly  supposed  that  he  read  them  not  without  some  pleasure. 
They  who  have  written  commentaries  on  those  poets,  or  on  Horace, 
Juvenal,  and  Martial,  have  explained  some  vices  which,  without  their 
interpretation,  had  been  unknown  to  modern  tirnes.  Neither  has  he 
judged  imj)artially  betwixt  the  former  age  and  us.     There  is  more 


PREFACE  TO   THE  FABLES  20I 

bawdry  in  one  play  of  Fletcher's,  called  The  Custom  of  the  Coun- 
try, than  in  all  ours  together.  Yet  this  has  been  often  acted  on  the 
stage  in  my  remembrance.  Are  the  times  so  much  more  reformed 
now  than  they  were  five  and  twenty  years  ago  ?  If  they  are,  I  con- 
gratulate the  amendment  of  our  morals.  But  I  am  not  to  preju- 
dice the  cause  of  my  fellow-poets,  though  I  abandon  my  own 
defence:  they  have  some  of  them  answered  for  themselves,  and 
neither  they  nor  I  can  think  Mr.  Collier  so  formidable  an  enemy 
that  we  should  shun  him.  He  has  lost  ground  at  the  latter  end  of 
the  day  by  pursuing  his  point  too  far,  like  the  Prince  of  Conde  at 
the  battle  of  Senneffe :  from  immoral  plays  to  no  plays,  ab  abusu 
ad  usum,  non  valet  consequentia}  But  being  a  party,  I  am  not  to 
erect  myself  into  a  judge.  As  for  the  rest  of  those  who  have 
written  against  me,  they  are  such  scoundrels  that  they  deserve 
not  the  least  notice  to  be  taken  of  them.  Blackmor^  and  Milbourn 
are  only  distinguished  from  the  crowd  by  being  remembered  to 
their  infamy :  — 

—  Demetri  teque,  Tigelli, 

Discipulorum  inter  jubeo  plorare  cathedras.^ 

1  [To  argue  from  the  abuse  of  a  thing  against  the  use  of  that  thing  is  inconse- 
quential.] 

2  [You,   Demetrius,  and  you,  Tigellus,  I   bid   howl  among  the  seats  of   the 
learners.] 


IX 

FREDERIC   HARRISON 

(1831) 

RUSKIN  AS  MASTER  OF  PROSE 

[Chapter  II.  of  Tennyson,  Ruskin,  Mill,  and  Other  Literary  Esti- 
mates, 1900.] 

Is  it  indeed  beyond  hope  that  our  generation  should  at  last  do 
entire  justice  to  our  brightest  living  genius,  the  most  inspiring  soul 
still  extant  amongst  us,  whilst  he  may  yet  be  seen  and  heard  in  the 
flesh? 

The  world  has  long  been  of  one  mind  as  to  the  great  charm  in  the 
writings  of  John  Ruskin;  it  feels  his  subtle  insight  into  all  forms 
of  beauty;  and  it  has  made  familiar  truisms  of  his  central  lessons  in 
Art.  But  it  has  hardly  yet  understood  that  he  stands  forth  now, 
alone  and  inimitable,  as  a  supreme  master  of  our  English  tongue; 
that  as  preacher,  prophet  (nay,  some  amongst  us  do  not  hesitate 
to  say  as  saint),  he  has  done  more  than  as  master  of  Art;  that  his 
moral  and  social  influence  on  our  time,  more  than  his  aesthetic  im- 
pulse, will  be  the  chief  memory  for  which  our  descendants  will 
hold  him  in  honour. 

Such  genius,  such  zeal,  such  self-devotion,  should  have  imposed 
itself  upon  the  age  without  a  dissentient  voice;  but  the  reputation 
of  John  Ruskin  has  been  exposed  to  some  singular  difficulties. 
Above  all,  he  is,  to  use  an  Italian  phrase,  uomo  antico:  a  survival 
of  a  past  age :  a  man  of  the  thirteenth  century  pouring  out  sermons, 
denunciations,  rhapsodies  to  the  nineteenth  century;  and  if  Saint 
Bernard  himself,  in  his  garb  of  frieze  and  girdle  of  hemp,  were  to 
preach  amongst  us  in  Hyde  Park  to-day,  too  many  of  us  would 
listen  awhile,  and  then  straightway  go  about  our  business  with  a 
smile.     But  John  Ruskin  is  not  simply  a  man  of  the  thirteenth  cen- 

2D2 


RUSKIN  AS  MASTER  OF  PROSE  203 

tury:  he  is  a  poet,  a  mystic,  a  missionary  of  the  thirteenth  century 

—  romantic  as  was  the  vouno;  Dante  in  the  davs  of  his  love  and 
his  chivalrous  youth,  and  his  Florentine  rapture  in  all  beautiful 
things,  or  as  was  the  young  Petrarch  in  the  lifetime  of  his  Laura, 
or  the  young  Francis  beginning  to  dream  of  a  regeneration  of  Chris- 
tendom through  the  teaching  of  his  barefoot  Friars. 

Now  John  Ruskin  not  only  is  in  his  soul  a  thirteenth-century 
poet  and  mystic :  but,  being  this,  he  would  literally  have  the 
nineteenth  century  go  back  to  the  thirteenth :  he  means  what  he 
says:  he  acts  on  what  he  means.  And  he  defies  fact,  the  set  of 
many  ages,  the  actual  generation  around  him,  and  still  calls  on  them, 
alone  and  in  spite  of  neglect  and  rebuffs,  to  go  back  to  the  Golden 
Ages  of  the  Past.  He  would  not  reject  this  description  of  him- 
self: he  would  proudly  accept  it.  But  this  being  so,  it  is  inevitable 
that  much  of  his  teaching  —  all  the  teaching  for  which  he  cares 
most  in  his  heart  —  must  be  in  our  day  the  voice  of  one  preaching 
in  the  wilderness. 

He  claims  to  be  not  merely  poet  of  the  beautiful,  but  missionary 
of  the  truth;  not  so  much  judge  in  Art  as  master  in  Philosophy. 
And  as  such  he  repudiates  modern  science,  modern  machinery, 
modern  politics  —  in  a  sense  modern  civilization  as  we  know  it 
and  make  it.  Not  merely  is  it  his  ideal  to  get  rid  of  these ;  but  in  his 
own  way  he  sets  himself  manfully  to  extirpate  these  things  in  prac- 
tice from  the  visible  life  of  himself  and  of  those  who  surround  him. 
Such  heroic  impossibilities  recoil  on  his  own  head.  The  nineteenth 
century  has  been  too  strong  for  him.  Iron,  steam,  science,  democ- 
racy —  have  thrust  him  aside,  and  have  left  him  in  his  old  age  little 
but  a  solitary  and  most  pathetic  Prophet,  such  as  a  John  the  Bap- 
tist by  Mantegna,  unbending,  undismayed,  still  crying  out  to  a 
scanty  band  around  him  —  "Repent,  for  the  kingdom  of  Heaven 
is  at  hand  ! " 

I  am  one  who  believes  most  devoutly  in  the  need  of  repentance, 
and  in  the  ultimate,  if  not  early,  advent  of  a  kingdom  of  the  Beau- 
tiful and  the  Good.  But  like  the  world  around  me,  I  hold  by 
the  nineteenth  century  and  not  by  the  thirteenth :  —  or  rather  I 
trust  that  some  Century  to  come  may  find  means  of  reconciling  the 
ages  of  Steam  and  the  ages  of  Faith,  of  combining  the  best  of  all 
ages  in  one.  Unluckily,  as  do  other  prophets,  as  do  most  mystics, 
John  Ruskin  will  have  undivided  allegiance.     With  him,  it  is  ever 

—  all  or  none.     Accept  him  and  his  lesson  —  wholly,  absolutely, 
without  murmur  or  doubt  —  or  he  will  have  none  of  your  homage. 


204  FREDERIC  HARRISON 

And  the  consequence  is  that  his  devotees  have  been  neither  many, 
nor  impressive.  His  genius,  as  most  men  admit,  will  carry  him 
at  times  into  fabulous  extravagances,  and  his  exquisite  tenderness 
of  soul  will  ofttimes  seem  to  be  but  a  second  childhood  in  the  eyes 
of  the  world.  Thus  it  has  come  to  pass  that  the  grotesque  side  of 
this  noble  Evangel  of  his  has  been  perpetually  thrust  into  the  fore- 
front of  the  fight;  and  those  who  have  professed  to  expound  the 
Gospel  of  Ruskin  have  been  for  the  most  part  such  lads  and  lasses 
as  the  world  in  its  grossness  regards  with  impatience,  and  turns 
from  with  a  smile. 

As  one  of  the  oldest  and  most  fervent  believers  in  his  genius  and 
the  noble  uses  to  which  he  has  devoted  it,  I  long  to  say  a  word  or 
two  in  support  of  my  belief :  not  that  I  have  the  shadow  of  a  claim 
to  speak  as  his  disciple,  to  defend  his  utterances,  or  to  represent  his 
thoughts.  In  one  sense,  no  doubt,  I  stand  at  an  opposite  pole  of 
ideas,  and  in  literal  and  direct  words,  I  could  hardly  adopt  any 
one  of  the  leading  doctrines  of  his  creed.  As  to  mine,  he  probably 
rejects  everything  I  hold  sacred  and  true  with  violent  indignation 
and  scorn.  Morally,  spiritually,  as  seen  through  a  glass  darkly, 
I  believe  that  his  teachers  and  my  teachers  are  essentially  one, 
and  may  yet  be  combined  in  the  greater  harmony  that  is  to  be. 
But  to  all  this  I  should  despair  of  inducing  him  to  agree,  or  even 
to  listen  with  patience.  He  regards  me,  I  fear,  as  an  utterly  lost 
soul,  destined  to  nothing  but  evil  in  this  world  and  the  next.  And 
did  he  not  once  long  ago,  in  private  communication  and  in  public 
excommunication,  consign  me  to  outer  darkness,  and  cover  with 
indignant  scorn  every  man  and  everything  in  which  I  have  put  my 
trust  ? 

The  world  has  long  been  of  one  mind,  I  have  said,  as  to  the 
beauty  of  Ruskin's  writing;  but  I  venture  to  think  that  even  yet 
full  justice  has  not  been  rendered  to  his  consummate  mastery  over 
our  English  tongue :  that  it  has  not  been  put  high  enough,  and  some 
of  its  unique  qualities  have  not  been  perceived.  Now  I  hold  that 
in  certain  qualities,  in  given  ways,  and  in  some  rarer  passages  of 
his,  Ruskin  not  only  surpasses  every  contemporary  writer  of  prose 
(which  indeed  is  obvious  enough),  but  he  calls  out  of  our  glorious 
English  tongue  notes  more  strangely  beautiful  and  inspiring  than 
any  ever  yet  issued  from  that  instrument.  No  writer  of  prose 
before  or  since  has  ever  rolled  forth  such  mighty  fantasias,  or 
reached  such  pathetic  melodies  in  words,  or  composed  long  books 
in  one  sustained  strain  of  limpid  grace. 


RUSKIN  AS  MASTER  OF  PROSE  205 

It  is  indeed  very  far  from  a  perfect  style :  much  less  is  it  in  any 
sense  a  model  style,  or  one  to  be  cultivated,  studied,  or  followed. 
If  any  young  aspirant  were  to  think  it  could  be  imitated,  better 
were  a  millstone  hung  round  his  neck  and  he  were  cast  into  the  sea. 
No  man  can  bend  the  bow  of  Ulysses :  and  if  he  dared  to  take  down 
from  its  long  rest  the  terrible  weapon,  such  an  one  might  give  him- 
self an  ugly  wound.  Ulysses  himself  has  shot  with  it  wildly, 
madly,  with  preposterous  overflying  of  the  mark,  and  blind  aiming 
at  the  wrong  target.  Ruskin,  be  it  said  in  sorrow,  has  too  often 
played  unseemly  pranks  on  his  great  instrument:  is  too  often 
"in  excess,"  as  the  Ethics  put  it,  indeed  he  is  usually  "in  excess"; 
he  has  used  his  mastery  in  mere  exultation  in  his  own  mastery; 
and,  as  he  now  knows  himself,  he  has  used  it  out  of  wantonness  — 
rarely,  but  very  rarely,  as  in  The  Seven  Lamps,  in  a  spirit  of  display, 
or  with  reckless  defiance  of  sense,  good  taste,  reserve  of  strength  — 
yet  never  with  affectation,  never  as  a  tradesman,  as  a  hack. 

We  need  not  enter  here  on  the  interminable  debate  about  what 
is  called  "  poetic  prose,"  whether  poetic  prose  be  a  legitimate  form 
of  expressing  ideas.  A  good  deal  of  nonsense  has  been  talked  about 
it;  and  the  whole  matter  seems  too  much  a  dispute  about  terms. 
If  prose  be  ornate  with  flowers  of  speech  inappropriate  to  the  idea 
expressed,  or  studiously  affected,  or  obtrusively  luscious  —  it  is 
bad  prose.  If  the  language  be  proper  to  verse  but  improper  to 
prose  —  it  is  bad  prose.  If  the  cadences  begin  to  be  obvious, 
if  they  tend  to  be  actually  scanned  as  verses,  if  the  images  are  re- 
mote, lyrical,  piled  over  one  another,  needlessly  complicated'  if 
the  passage  has  to  be  read  twice  before  we  grasp  its  meanings  — 
then  it  is  bad  prose.  On  the  other  hand,  all  ideas  are  capable  of 
being  expressed  in  prose,  as  well  as  in  verse.  They  may  be  clothed 
with  as  much  grace  as  is  consistent  with  precision.  If  the  sense 
be  absolutely  clear,  the  flow  of  words  perfectly  easy,  the  language 
in  complete  harmony  with  the  thought,  then  no  beauty  in  the 
phraseology  can  be  misplaced  —  provided  that  this  beauty  is  held 
in  reserve,  is  to  be  unconsciously  felt,  not  obviously  thrust  forward, 
and  is  always  the  beauty  of  prose,  and  not  the  beauty  of  verse. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  Ruskin,  especially  in  his  earlier  works, 
is  too  often  obtrusively  luscious,  that  his  images  are  often  lyrical, 
set  in  too  profuse  and  gorgeous  a  mosaic.  Be  it  so.  But  he  is 
always  perfectly,  transparently  clear,  absolutely  free  from  affected 
euphuism,  never  laboriously  "precious,"  never  grotesque,  never 
eccentric.     His  besetting  sins  as  a  master  of  speech  may  be  summed 


2o6  FREDERIC  HARRISON 

up  in  his  passion  for  profuse  imagery,  and  delight  in  an  almost 
audible  melody  of  words.  But  how  different  is  this  from  the 
laborious  affectation  of  what  is  justly  condemned  as  the  "poetic 
prose"  of  a  writer  who  tries  to  be  fine,  seeking  to  perform  feats  of 
composition,  who  flogs  himself  into  a  bastard  sort  of  poetry,  not 
because  he  enjoys  it,  but  to  impose  upon  an  ignorant  reader ! 
This  Ruskin  never  does.  When  he  bursts  the  bounds  of  line  taste, 
and  pelts  us  with  perfumed  flowers  till  we  almost  faint  under  their 
odour  and  their  blaze  of  colour,  it  is  because  he  is  himself  intoxi- 
cated with  the  joy  of  his  blossoming  thoughts,  and  would  force 
some  of  his  divine  afHatus  into  our  souls.  The  priestess  of  the 
Delphic  god  never  spoke  without  inspiration,  and  then  did  not  use 
the  flat  speech  of  daily  life.  Would  that  none  ever  spoke  in  books, 
until  they  felt  the  god  working  in  their  heart. 

To  be  just,  we  should  remember  that  a  very  large  part  of  all  that 
Ruskin  treats  concerns  some  scene  of  beauty,  some  work  of  fine 
art,  some  earnest  moral  exhortation,  some  indignant  rebuke  to 
meanness,  —  wherein  passionate  delight  and  passionate  appeal  are 
not  merely  lawful,  but  are  of  the  essence  of  the  lesson.  Ruskin 
is  almost  always  in  an  ecstasy  of  admiration,  or  in  a  fervour  of 
sympathy,  or  in  a  grand  burst  of  prophetic  warning.  It  is  his  mis- 
sion, his  nature,  his  happiness  so  to  be.  And  it  is  inevitable  that 
such  passion  and  eagerness  should  be  clothed  in  language  more  re- 
mote from  the  language  of  conversation  than  is  that  of  Swift  or 
Hume.  The  language  of  the  preacher  is  not,  nor  ought  it  to  be, 
the  language  of  the  critic,  the  philosopher,  the  historian.  Ruskin 
is  a  preacher :  right  or  wrong  he  has  to  deliver  his  message,  whether 
men  will  stay  to  hear  it  or  not ;  and  we  can  no  more  require  him 
to  limit  his  pace  to  the  plain  foot-plodding  of  unimpassioned  prose 
than  we  can  ask  this  of  Saint  Bernard,  or  of  Bossuet,  of  Jeremy 
Taylor  or  Thomas  Carlyle. 

Besides  all  this,  Ruskin  has  shown  that,  where  the  business  in 
hand  is  simjjle  instruction,  philosophical  argument,  or  mechanical 
exposition,  he  is  master  of  an  English  style  of  faultless  ease,  sim- 
plicity, and  point.  When  he  wants  to  describe  a  plain  thing,  a 
particular  instrument  for  drawing,  a  habit  of  Turner's  work,  the 
exact  form  of  a  boat,  or  a  tower,  or  a  shell,  no  one  can  surpass  him, 
or  ecjual  him,  in  the  clearness  and  precision  of  his  words.  His 
little  book  on  the  Elements  of  Drawing  is  a  masterpiece  in  lucid 
explanation  of  simple  mechanical  rules  and  practices.  PrcBterita, 
Fors  Clavigera,  and  the  recent  notes  to  reprinted  works,  contain 


RUSKIN   AS  MASTER   OF  PROSE  20j 

easy  bits  of  narration,  of  banter,  of  personal  humour,  that  Swift, 
Defoe,  Goldsmith,  and  Lamb  might  envy.  Turn  to  that  much- 
abused  book.  Unto  this  Last  —  the  central  book  of  his  life,  as  it  is 
the  turning-point  of  his  career  —  it  is  almost  wholly  free  from 
every  fault  of  excess  with  which  he  has  been  charged.  Men  may 
differ  as  to  the  argument.  But  no  capable  critic  will  doubt  that 
as  a  type  of  philosophical  discussion,  its  form  is  as  fine  and  as 
pure  as  the  form  of  Berkeley  or  of  Hume. 

But  when,  his  whole  soul  aglow  with  some  scene  of  beauty, 
transfigured  by  a  profound  moral  emotion,  he  breaks  forth  into 
one  of  those  typical  descants  of  his,  our  judgment  may  still  doubt  if 
the  colouring  be  not  overcharged  and  the  composition  too  crowded 
for  perfect  art,  but  we  are  carried  away  by  its  beauty,  its  rhythm, 
its  pathos.  We  know  that  the  sentence  is  too  long,  preposterously, 
impossibly  sustained  —  200  words  and  more  —  250,  nay,  280 
words  without  a  single  pause  —  each  sentence  with  40,  50,  60 
commas,  colons,  and  semicolons  —  and  yet  the  whole  symphony 
Hows  on  with  such  just  modulation,  the  images  melt  so  naturally 
into  each  other,  the  harmony  of  tone  and  the  ease  of  words  are 
so  complete,  that  we  hasten  through  the  passage  in  a  rapture  of 
admiration.  Milton  often  began,  and  once  or  twice  completed, 
such  a  resounding  voluntary  on  his  glorious  organ.  But  neither 
Milton,  nor  Browne,  nor  Jeremy  Taylor,  was  yet  quite  master  of 
the  mighty  instrument.  Ruskin,  who  comes  after  two  centuries 
of  further  and  continuous  progress  in  this  art,  is  master  of  the  subtle 
instrument  of  prose.  And  though  it  be  true  that  too  often,  in 
wanton  defiance  of  calm  judgment,  he  will  fling  to  the  winds  his 
self-control,  he  has  achieved  in  this  rare  and  perilous  art  some 
amazing  triumphs  of  mastery  over  language,  such  as  the  whole 
history  of  our  literature  cannot  match. 

Lovers  of  Ruskin  (that  is  all  who  read  good  English  books)  can 
recall,  and  many  of  them  can  repeat,  hundreds  of  such  passages, 
and  they  wiU  grumble  at  an  attempt  to  select  any  passage  at  all. 
But  to  make  my  meaning  clear,  I  will  turn  to  one  or  two  very 
famous  bits,  not  at  all  asserting  that  they  are  the  most  truly  noble 
passages  that  Ruskin  ever  wrote,  but  as  specimens  of  his  more 
lyrical  mood.  He  has  himself  spoken  with  slight  of  much  of  his 
earlier  writing  —  often  perhaps  with  undeserved  humility.  He 
especially  regrets  the  purpurei  panni,^  as  he  calls  them,  of  The 
Seven  Lamps  and  cognate  pieces.     I  v/ill  not  quote  any  of  these 

1  [Purple  rags.] 


2o8  FREDERIC  HARRISON 

piirpuret  panni,  though  I  think  that  as  rhetorical  prose,  as  apodeictic 
perorations,  English  hterature  has  nothing  to  compare  with  them. 
But  they  are  rhetorical,  somewhat  artificial,  manifest  displays  of 
eloquence  —  and  we  shall  all  agree  that  eloquent  displays  of  rhet- 
oric are  not  the  best  specimens  of  prose  composition. 

I  take  first  a  well-known  piece  of  an  early  book  {Modern  Painters, 
Vol.  IV.  c.  i.,  1856),  the  old  Tower  of  Calais  Church,  a  piece  which 
has  haunted  my  memory  for  nearly  forty  years :  — 

"  The  large  neglect,  the  noble  unsightliness  of  it ;  the  record  of  its  years 
written  so  visibly,  yet  without  sign  of  weakness  or  decay ;  its  stern  wasteness 
and  gloom,  eaten  away  by  the  Channel  winds,  and  overgrown  with  the  bitter 
sea  grasses;  its  slates  and  tiles  all  shaken  and  rent,  and  yet  not  falling;  its 
desert  of  brickwork,  full  of  bolts,  and  holes,  and  ugly  fissures,  and  yet  strong, 
like  a  bare  brown  rock;  its  carelessness  of  what  any  one  thinks  or  feels 
about  it ;  putting  forth  no  claim,  having  no  beauty,  nor  desirableness,  pride, 
nor  grace ;  yet  neither  asking  for  pity ;  not,  as  ruins  are,  useless  and  piteous, 
feebly  or  fondly  garrulous  of  better  days;  but  useful  still,  going  through  its 
own  daily  work,  —  as  some  old  fisherman,  beaten  gray  by  storm,  yet  draw- 
ing his  daily  nets:  so  it  stands,  with  no  complaint  about  its  past  youth,  in 
blanched  and  meagre  massiveness  and  serviceableness,  gathering  human 
souls  together  underneath  it ;  the  sound  of  its  bells  for  prayer  still  rolling 
through  its  rents ;  and  the  gray  peak  of  it  seen  far  across  the  sea,  principal  of 
the  three  that  rise  above  the  waste  of  surfy  sand  and  hillocked  shore,  —  the 
lighthouse  for  life,  and  the  belfry  for  labour,  and  this  —  for  patience  and 
praise." 

This  passage  I  take  to  be  one  of  the  most  magnificent  examples  of 
the  "pathetic  fallacy  "  in  our  language.  Perhaps  the  "pathetic  fal- 
lacy "  is  second-rate  art ;  the  passage  is  too  long  —  211  words  alas  ! 
without  one  full  stop,  and  more  than  forty  commas  and  other  marks 
of  punctuation  — ■  it  has  trop  de  clioses  —  it  has  redundancies, 
tautologies,  and  artifices,  if  we  are  strictly  severe  —  but  what  a 
picture,  what  pathos,  what  subtlety  of  observation,  what  nobility 
of  association  —  and  withal  how  complete  is  the  unity  of  impres- 
sion !  How  mournful,  how  stately  is  the  cadence,  most  harmonious 
and  yet  peaceful  is  the  phraseology,  and  how  wonderfully  do 
thought,  the  antique  history,  the  picture,  the  musical  bars  of  the 
whole  y:)iece  combine  in  beauty !  What  fine  and  just  images  — 
"the  large  neglect,"  the  "noble  unsightliness."  The  tower  is 
"eaten  away  by  the  Channel  winds,"  "overgrown  with  bitter  sea 
grasses."  It  is  "careless,"  "puts  forth  no  claim,"  has  "no  pride," 
does  not  "ask  for  pity,"  is  not  "fondly  garrulous,"  as  other  ruins 
are,  but  still  goes  through  its  work,  "like  some  old  fisherman." 
It  stands  blanched,  meagre,  massive,  but  still  serviceable,  making 


RUSKIN  AS  MASTER  OF  PROSE  209 

no  complaint  about  its  past  youth.  A  wonderful  bit  of  word-paint- 
ing —  and,  perhaps,  word-painting,  at  least  on  a  big  canvas,  is 
not  strictly  lawful  —  but  such  a  picture  as  few  poets  and  no  prose- 
writer  has  surpassed !  Byron  would  have  painted  it  in  deeper, 
fiercer  strokes.  Shelley  and  Wordsworth  would  have  been  less 
definite.  Coleridge  would  not  have  driven  home  the  moral  so 
earnestly;  though  Tennyson  might  have  embodied  it  in  the 
stanzas  of  In  Memoriam. 

I  should  like  to  take  this  passage  as  a  text  to  point  to  a  quality 
of  Ruskin's  prose  in  which,  I  believe,  he  has  surpassed  all  other 
writers.  It  is  the  quality  of  musical  assonance.  There  is  plenty 
of  alliteration  in  Ruskin,  as  there  is  in  all  fine  writers:  but  the 
musical  harmony  of  sound  in  Ruskin's  happiest  efforts  is  some- 
thing very  different  from  alliteration,  and  much  more  subtle. 
Coarse,  obtrusive,  artificial  alliteration,  i.e.  the  recurrence  of  words 
with  the  same  initial  letter,  becomes,  when  crudely  treated  or  over- 
done, a  gross  and  irritating  form  of  affectation.  But  the  prejudice 
against  alliteration  may  be  carried  too  far.  Alliteration  is  the 
natural  expression  of  earnest  feeling  in  every  form  —  it  is  a  physio- 
logical result  of  passion  and  impetuosity :  —  it  becomes  a  defect 
when  it  is  repeated  too  often,  or  in  an  obtrusive  way,  or  when  it 
becomes  artificial,  and  studied.  Whilst  alliteration  is  spontane- 
ous, implicit  not  explicit,  felt  not  seen,  the  natural  working  of  a 
fine  ear,  it  is  not  only  a  legitimate  expedient  both  of  prose  and  of 
verse,  but  is  an  indispensable  accessory  of  the  higher  harmonies, 
whether  of  verse  or  prose. 

Ruskin  uses  alliteration  much  (it  must  be  admitted,  in  profu- 
sion), but  he  relies  on  a  far  subtler  resource  of  harmony  —  that  is 
assonance,  or  as  I  should  prefer  to  name  it,  consonance.  I  have 
never  seen  this  quality  treated  at  all  systematically,  but  I  am  con- 
vinced that  it  is  at  the  basis  of  all  fine  cadences  both  in  verse  and 
in  prose.  By  consonance  I  mean  the  recurrence  of  the  same,  or  of 
cognate,  sounds,  not  merely  in  the  first  letter  of  words,  but  where 
the  stress  comes,  in  any  part  of  a  word,  and  that  in  sounds  whether 
vowel  or  consonant.  Grimm's  law  of  interchangeable  consonants 
applies;  and  all  the  well-known  groupings  of  consonants  may  be 
noted.  The  liquids  connote  the  sweeter,  the  gutturals  the  sterner 
ideas;  the  sibilants  connect  and  organize  the  words.  Of  poets 
perhaps  Milton,  Shelley,  and  Tennyson  make  the  fullest  use  of  this 
resource.  We  need  not  suppose  that  it  is  consciously  sought,  or  in 
any  sense  studied,  or  even  observed  by  the  poet.     But  consonance. 


2IO  FREDERIC   HARRISON 

i.e.  recurrence  of  the  same  or  kindred  sounds,  is  very  visible  when 
we  look  for  it  in  a  beautiful  cadence.     Take  Tennyson's  — 

Old  Yew,  which  graspest  at  the  stones 

That  name  the  under-lying  dead, 

Thy  fibres  net  the  dreamless  head, 
Thy  roots  are  wrapt  about  the  bones. 

How  much  does  the  music,  nay  the  impressiveness,  of  this  stanza 
depend  on  consonance!  The  great  booming  O  with  which  it 
opens,  is  repeated  in  the  last  word  of  the  first,  and  also  of  the  last 
line.  The  cruel  word  "graspest"  is  repeated  in  part  in  the  harsh 
word  "stones."  Three  lines,  and  six  words  in  all,  begin  with  the 
soft  "th":  "name"  is  echoed  by  "net,"  "under-lying"  by 
"dreamless";  the  "r"  of  "roots"  is  heard  again  in  "wrapt," 
the  "b"  in  "fibres,"  in  "about,"  and  "bones."  These  are  not 
at  all  accidental  cases  of  consonance. 

This  musical  consonance  is  quite  present  in  fine  prose,  although 
many  powerful  writers  seem  to  have  had  but  little  ear  for  its 
effects.  Such  men  as  Swift,  Defoe,  Gibbon,  Macaulay,  seldom 
advance  beyond  alliteration  in  the  ordinary  sense.  But  true 
consonance,  or  musical  correspondence  of  note,  is  very  perceptible 
in  the  prose  of  Milton,  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  of  Burke,  of  Cole- 
ridge, of  De  Quincey.  Above  all,  it  is  especially  marked  in  our 
English  Bible,  and  in  the  Collects  and  grander  canticles  of  the 
Prayer  Book ;  and  is  the  source  of  much  of  their  power  over  us. 
Of  all  the  masters  of  prose  literature,  John  Ruskin  has  made 
the  finest  use  of  this  resource,  and  with  the  most  delicate  and 
mysterious  power.  And  this  is  no  doubt  due  to  his  mind  being 
saturated  from  childhood  with  the  harmonies  of  our  English 
Bible,  and  to  his  speaking  to  us  with  religious  solemnity  and  in 
Biblical  tones. 

This  piece  about  the  tower  of  Calais  Church  is  full  of  this 
beautiful  and  subtle  form  of  alliteration  or  colliteration  —  "the 
large  neglect,  the  noble  unsightliness  of  it"  —  "the  record  of  its 
years  written  so  visibly,  yet  without  sign  of  weakness  or  decay" 
—  "thesound  of  its  bells  for  prayer  still  rolling  through  its  rents." 
Here  in  a  single  line  are  three  liquid  double  "11";  there  are  six 
"s";  there  are  are  five  "r"  in  seven  words  —  "sound  rolling 
through  rents"  is  finely  expressive  of  a  peal  of  be'ls.  And  the 
passage  ends  with  a  triple  alliteration  —  the  second  of  the  three 
being  inverted:    "bel"  echoing  to  "lab" — "the  lighthouse  for 


RUSKIN  AS  MASTER   OF  PROSE  211 

life,   and    the    belfry   for   labour,    and    this  —  for   patience  and 

praise." 

Turn  to  another  famous  passage  (Modern  Painters,  Vol.  IV. 
cap.  19),  a  somewhat  overwrought,  possibly  unjust  picture, 
stained  as  usual  with  the  original  sin  of  Calvinism,  but  a  wonderful 
piece  of  imaginative  description.  It  is  the  account  of  the  peasant 
of  the  Valais,  in  the  grand  chapter  on  "Mountain  Gloom." 

"They  do  not  understand  so  much  as  the  name  of  beauty,  or  of  knowledge. 
They  understand  dimly  that  of  virtue.  Love,  patience,  hospitality,  faith,  — 
these  things  they  know.  To  glean  their  meadows  side  by  side,  so  happier; 
to  bear  the  burden  up  the  breathless  mountain  flank  unmurmuringly;  to 
bid  the  stranger  drink  from  their  vessel  of  milk ;  to  see  at  the  foot  of  their  low 
death-beds  a  pale  figure  upon  a  cross,  dying,  also  patiently ;  —  in  this  they 
are  different  from  the  cattle  and  from  the  stones ;  but,  in  all  this,  unrewarded, 
so  far  as  concerns  the  present  life.  For  them,  there  is  neither  hope  nor  pas- 
sion of  spirit;  for  them,  neither  advance  nor  exultation.  Black  bread,  rude 
roof,  dark  night,  laborious  day,  weary  arm  at  sunset ;  and  life  ebbs  away. 
No  books,  no  thoughts,  no  attainments,  no  rest,  —  except  only  sometimes  a 
little  sitting  in  the  sun  under  the  church  wall,  as  the  bell  tolls  thin  and  far 
in  the  mountain  air ;  a  pattering  of  a  few  prayers,  not  understood,  by  the  altar- 
rails  of  the  dimly  gilded  chapel,  —  and  so,  back  to  the  sombre  home,  with  the 
cloud  upon  them  still  unbroken  —  that  cloud  of  rocky  gloom,  born  out  of  the 
wild  torrents  and  ruinous  stones,  and  unlightened  even  in  their  religion,  ex- 
cept by  the  vague  promise  of  some  better  things  unknown,  mingled  with 
threatening,  and  obscured  by  an  unspeakable  horror  —  a  smoke,  as  it  were, 
of  martyrdom,  coiling  up  with  the  incense  ;  and  amidst  the  images  of  tortured 
bodies  and  lamenting  spirits  in  hurtling  flames,  the  very  cross,  for  them,  dashed 
more  deeply  than  for  others  with  gouts  of  blood." 

The  piece  is  over-wrought  as  well  as  unjust,  with  somewhat 
false  emphasis,  but  how  splendid  in  colour  and  majestic  in  lan- 
guage!  "To  bear  the  burden  up  the  breathless  mountain  flank 
unmurmuringly" — ^  is  fine  in  spite  of  its  obvious  scansion  and 
its  profuse  alliteration.  "At  their  low  death-beds  a  pale  figure 
upon  a  cross,  dying,  also  patiently"  —  will  not  scan,  and  it  is 
charged  with  solemnity  by  soft  "1,".  "d,"  and  "p"  repeated. 
How  beautifully  imitative  is  the  line,  "as  the  bell  tolls  thin  and 
far  in  the  mountain  air  "  —  a,  e,  i,  o,  u  —  with  ten  monosyllables 
and  one  dissyllable!  "The  cross  dashed  more  deeply  with  gouts 
of  blood. ^^  No  one  who  has  ever  read  that  passage  can  pass  along  the 
Catholic  valleys  of  the  Swiss  Alps  without  having  it  in  his  mind. 
Overcharged,  and  somewhat  consciously  and  designedly  pictorial 
as  it  is,  it  is  a  truly  wonderful  example  of  mastery  over  language 
and  sympathetic  insight. 

We  may  turn  now  to  a  passage  or  two,  in  which  perhaps  Ruskin 


212  FREDERIC  HARRISON 

is  quite  at  his  best.  He  has  written  few  things  finer,  and  indeed 
more  exactly  truthful,  than  his  picture  of  the  Campagna  of  Rome. 
This  is  in  the  Preface  to  the  second  edition  of  Modern  Painters, 
1843. 

"Perhaps  there  is  no  more  impressive  scene  on  earth  than  the  soHtary 
extent  of  the  Campagna  of  Rome  under  evening  Hght.  Let  the  reader  im- 
agine himself  for  the  moment  withdrawn  from  the  sounds  and  motion  of  the 
Hving  world,  and  sent  forth  alone  into  this  wild  and  wasted  plain.  The  earth 
yields  and  crumbles  beneath  his  foot,  tread  he  never  so  lightly,  for  its  sub- 
stance is  white,  hollow,  and  carious,  like  the  dusty  wreck  of  the  bones  of 
men.  The  long  knotted  grass  waves  and  tosses  feebly  in  the  evening  wind, 
and  the  shadows  of  its  motion  shake  feverishly  along  the  banks  of  ruin  that 
lift  themselves  to  the  sunlight.  Hillocks  of  mouldering  earth  heave  around 
him,  as  if  the  dead  beneath  were  struggling  in  their  sleep.  Scattered  blocks 
of  black  stone,  four-square  remnants  of  mighty  edifices,  not  one  left  upon 
another,  lie  upon  them  to  keep  them  down.  A  dull  purple  poisonous  haze 
stretches  level  along  the  desert,  veiling  its  spectral  wrecks  of  massy  ruins, 
on  whose  rents  the  red  light  rests,  like  dying  fire  on  defiled  altars;  the  blue 
ridge  of  the  Alban  Mount  Hf  ts  itself  against  a  solemn  space  of  green,  clear,  quiet 
sky.  Watch-towers  of  dark  clouds  stand  steadfastly  along  the  promontories 
of  the  Apennines.  From  the  plain  to  the  mountains,  the  shattered  aqueducts, 
pier  beyond  pier,  melt  into  the  darkness,  like  shadowy  and  countless  troops  of 
funeral  mourners,  passing  from  a  nation's  grave." 

Here  is  a  piece  of  pure  description  without  passion  or  moraliz- 
ing; the  passage  is  broken,  as  we  find  in  all  good  modern  prose, 
into  sentences  of  forty  or  fifty  words.  It  is  absolutely  clear, 
literally  true,  an  imaginative  picture  of  one  of  the  most  impres- 
sive scenes  in  the  world.  All  who  know  it,  remember  "the  white, 
hollow,  carious  earth,"  like  bone  dust,  "the  long  knotted  grass," 
the  "  banks  of  ruin  "  and  "  hillocks  of  mouldering  earth,"  the  "dull 
purple  poisonous  haze,"  "the  shattered  aqueducts,"  like  shadowy 
mourners  at  a  nation's  grave.  The  whole  piece  may  be  set  beside 
Shelley's  poem  from  the  "Euganean  Hills,"  and  it  produces  a 
kindred  impression.  In  Ruskin's  prose,  perhaps  for  the  first 
time  in  literature,  there  are  met  the  eye  of  the  landscape  painter 
and  the  voice  of  the  lyric  poet  —  and  both  are  blended  in  per- 
fection. It  seems  to  me  idle  to  debate,  whether  or  not  it  is  legiti- 
mate to  describe  in  prose  a  magnificent  scene,  whether  it  be  lawful 
to  set  down  in  prose  the  ideas  which  this  scene  kindles  in  an  imagi- 
native soul,  whether  it  be  permitted  to  such  an  artist  to  resort 
to  any  resource  of  grace  or  power  which  the  English  language 
can  present. 

This  magnificent  piece  of  word-painting  is  hardly  surpassed  by 


RUSKIN  AS  MASTER   OF  PROSE  213 

anything  in  our  literature.  It  cannot  be  said  to  carry  allitera- 
tion to  the  point  of  affectation.  But  the  reader  may  easily  per- 
ceive by  analysis  how  greatly  its  musical  effect  depends  on  pro- 
fusion of  subtle  consonance.  The  "liquids"  give  grace:  the 
broad  o  and  a,  and  their  diphthong  sounds,  give  solemnity:  the 
gutturals  and  double  consonants  give  strength.  "A  dull  purple 
poisonous  haze  stretches  level  along  the  desert"  —  "on  whose 
rents  the  red  light  rests  like  dying  fire  on  defiled  altars."  Here 
in  thirteen  words  are  —  five  r,  four  t,  four  d,  three  1,  —  "Dark 
clouds  stand  steadfastly"  —  "  the  promontories  of  the  Apennines." 
The  last  clause  is  a  favourite  cadence  of  Ruskin's:  its  beautiful 
melody  depends  on  a  very  subtle  and  complex  scheme  of  conso- 
nance. "From  the  plain  to  the  mountains,  the  shattered  aque- 
ducts, pier  beyond  pier,  melt  into  the  darkness,  like  shadowy 
and  countless  troops  of  funeral  mourners,  passing  from  a  nation's 
grave."  It  is  impossible  to  suppose  that  the  harmonies  of  this 
"coda"  are  wholly  accidental.  They  are  the  effect  of  a  wonderful 
ear  for  tonality  in  speech,  certainly  unconscious,  arising  from 
passionate  feehng  more  than  from  reflection.  And  Mr.  Ruskin 
himself  would  no  doubt  be  the  first  to  deny  that  such  a  thought 
had  ever  crossed  his  mind ;  —  perhaps  he  would  himself  denounce 
with  characteristic  vehemence  any  such  vivisection  applied  to  his 
living  and  palpitating  words. 

I  turn  now  to  a  little  book  of  his  written  in  the  middle  of  his 
life,  at  the  height  of  his  power,  just  before  he  entered  on  his  second 
career  of  social  philosopher  and  new  evangelist.  The  Harhoiirs 
of  England  was  published  nearly  forty  years  ago  in  1856  {cetat.  37), 
and  it  has  now  been  happily  reprinted  in  a  cheap  and  smaller 
form,  1895.  It  is,  I  believe,  as  an  education  in  art,  as  true,  and 
as  masterly  as  anything  Ruskin  ever  wrote.  But  I  wish  now  to 
treat  it  only  from  the  point  of  view  of  English  literature.  And  I 
make  bold  to  say  that  no  book  in  our  language  shows  more  varied 
resources  over  prose-writing,  or  an  English  more  pure,  more 
vigorous,  more  enchanting.  It  contains  hardly  any  of  those 
tirades  with  which  the  preacher  loves  to  drench  his  hearers  — 
torrents  from  the  fountains  of  his  ecstasy,  or  his  indignation.  The 
book  is  full  of  enthusiasm  and  of  poetry :  but  it  also  contains  a 
body  of  critical  and  expository  matter  —  simple,  lucid,  graceful, 
incisive  as  anything  ever  set  down  by  the  hand  of  John  Ruskin, 
or  indeed  of  any  other  master  of  our  English  prose. 

Every  one  remembers  the  striking  sentence  with  which  it  opens 


214         •  FREDERIC   HARRISON 

—  a  sentence,  it  may  be,  exaggerated  in  meaning,  but  how  melo- 
diou'--,  how  impressive  —  "Of  all  things,  living  or  lifeless  [note 
the  five  1,  the  four  i,  in  the  first  six  words],  upon  this  strange  earth, 
there  is  but  one  which,  having  reached  the  mid-term  of  appointed 
human  endurance  on  it,  I  still  regard  with  unmitigated  amaze- 
ment." This  object  is  the  bow  of  a  Boat,  —  "the  blunt  head 
of  a  common,  bluff,  undecked  sea-boat  lying  aside  in  its  furrow 
of  beach  sand.  .  .  ."  ^ 

"  The  sum  of  Navigation  is  in  that.  You  may  magnify  it  or  decorate  it  as 
vou  will :  you  will  not  add  to  the  wonder  of  it.  Lengthen  it  into  hatchet-like 
edge  of  iron,  —  strengthen  it  with  complex  tracery  of  ribs  of  oak,  —  carve  it 
and  gild  it  till  a  column  of  light  moves  beneath  it  on  the  sea,  —  you  have 
made  no  more  of  it  than  it  was  at  first.  That  rude  simplicity  of  bent  plank, 
that  [?  should  he  'which']  can  breast  its  way  through  the  death  that  is  in  the 
deep  sea,  has  in  it  the  soul  of  shipping.  Beyond  this,  we  may  have  more 
work,  more  men,  more  money;    we  cannot  have  more  miracle." 

The  whole  passage  is  loaded  with  imagery,  with  fancy,  but 
hardly  with  conceits;  it  is  wonderfully  ingenious,  impressive, 
suggestive,  so  that  a  boat  is  never  quite  the  same  thing  to  any  one 
who  has  read  this  passage  in  early  life.  The  ever-changing 
curves  of  the  boat  recall  "the  image  of  a  sea-shell."  "Every 
plank  is  a  Fate,  and  has  men's  lives  wreathed  in  the  knots  of  it." 
This  bow  of  the  boat  is  "the  gift  of  another  world."  Without  it, 
we  should  be  "chained  to  our  rocks."  The  very  nails  that  fasten 
the  planks  are  "the  rivets  of  the  fellowship  of  the  world."  "Their 
iron  does  more  than  draw  lightning  out  of  heaven,  it  leads  love 
round  the  earth."  It  is  possible  to  call  this  fantastic,  over- 
wrought, lyrical:  it  is  not  possible  to  dispute  its  beauty,  charm, 
and  enthusiasm.  It  seems  to  me  to  carry  imaginative  prose  ex- 
actly to  that  limit  which  to  pass  would  cease  to  be  fitting  in  prose; 
to  carry  fancy  to  the  very  verge  of  that  which,  if  less  sincere,  less 
true,  less  pathetic,  would  justly  be  regarded  as  Euphuistic  conceit. 

And  so  this  splendid  hymn  to  the  sea-boit  rolls  on  to  that 
piece  which  I  take  to  be  as  fine  and  as  true  as  anything  ever  said 
about  the  sea,  even  by  our  sea  poets,  Byrofl  or  Shelley:  — 

"Then,  also,  it  is  wonderful  on  account  of  the  greatness  of  the  enemy 
that  it  does  battle  with.  To  lift  dead  weight;  to  overcome  length  of  languid 
space ;  to  multiply  or  systematize  a  p;iven  force  ;  this  we  may  sec  done  by  the 
bar,  or  beam,  or  wheel,  without  wonder.  But  to  war  w  ith  that  living  fury  of 
waters,  to  bare  its  breast,  moment  after  moment,  against  the  unwearied  enmity 
of  ocean,  —  the  subtle,  fitful,  implacable  smiting  of  the  black  waves,  provok- 


RUSKIN  AS  MASTER   OF  PROSE  215 

ing  each  other  on,  endlessly,  all  the  infinite  march  of  the  Atlantic  rolling  on 
behind  them  to  their  help,  and  still  to  strike  them  back  into  a  wreath  of  smoke 
and  futile  foam,  and  win  its  way  against  them,  and  keep  its  charge  of  life  from 
them;  —  does  any  other  soulless  thing  do  as  much  as  this?" 

This  noble  paragraph  has  truth,  originaHty,  music,  majesty, 
with  that  imitative  power  of  sound  which  is  usually  thought  to 
be  possible  only  in  poetry,  and  is  very  rarely  successful  even  in 
poetry.  Homer  has  often  caught  echoes  of  the  sea  in  his  majestic 
hexameters;  Byron  and  Shelley  occasionally  recall  it;  as  does 
Tennyson  in  its  milder  moods  and  calm  rest.  But  I  know  no 
other  English  prose  but  this  which,  literally  and  nobly  describing 
the  look  of  a  wild  sea,  suggests  in  the  very  rhythm  of  its  cadence, 
and  in  the  music  of  its  roar,  the  tumultuous  surging  of  the  surf  — 
"To  war  with  that  living  fury  of  waters" — -"the  subtle,  fitful, 
implacable  smiting  of  the  black  waves,"  —  "still  to  strike  them 
back  into  a  wreath  of  smoke  and  futile  foam,  and  win  its  way 
against  them."  Here  we  seem  not  only  to  see  before  our  eyes, 
but  to  hear  with  our  ears,  the  crash  of  a  stout  boat  plunging 
through  a  choppy  sea  off  our  southern  coasts. 

I  would  take  this  paragraph  as  the  high-water  mark  of  Ruskin's 
prose  method.  But  there  are  scores  and  hundreds  of  passages 
in  his  books  of  equal  power  and  perfection.  This  book  on  The 
Harbours  of  England  is  full  of  them.  O  si  sic  omnia /^  Alas! 
a  few  pages  further  on,  even  of  this  admirable  book  which  is  so 
free  from  them,  comes  one  of  those  ungovernable,  over-laden, 
hypertrophied  outbursts  of  his,  which  so  much  deform  his  earlier 
books.  It  is  a  splendid  piece  of  conception :  each  phrase,  each 
sentence,  is  beautiful;  the  images  are  appropriate  and  cognate; 
they  flow  naturally  out  of  each  other;  and  the  whole  has  a  most 
harmonious  glow.  But  alas !  as  English  prose,  it  is  impossible. 
It  has  255  words  without  a  pause,  and  26  intermediate  signs  of 
punctuation.  No  human  breath  could  utter  such  a  sentence: 
even  the  eye  is  bewildered;  and,  at  last,  the  most  docile  and 
attentive  reader  sinks  back,  stunned  and  puzzled  by  such  a  torrent 
of  phrases  and  such  a  wilderness  of  thoughts.^ 

He  is  speaking  of  the  fisher-boat  as  the  most  venerable  kind 

»  [Oh,  if  all  were  thus !] 

^  In  the  second  volume  of  Modern  Painters,  p.  132,  may  be  found  a  mammoth 
sentence,  I  suppose  the  most  gigantic  sentence  in  English  prose.  It  has  6iq  words 
without  a  full  stop,  and  80  intermediate  signs  of  punctuation,  together  with  four 
clauses  in  brackets.  It  has  been  reprinted  in  the  revised  two  volumes  edition  of 
1883,  where  it  fills  four  whole  pages,  i.  347-351. 


2l6  FREDERIC  HARRISON 

of  ship.  He  stands  musing  on  the  shingle  between  the  black 
sides  of  two  stranded  fishing-boats.  He  watches  "the  clear  heavy 
water-edge  of  ocean  rising  and  falling  close  to  their  bows."  And 
then  he  turns  to  the  boats. 

"  And  the  dark  flanks  of  the  fishing-boats  all  aslope  above,  in  their  shining 
quietness,  hot  in  the  morning  sun,  rusty  and  seamed,  with  scjuare  patches  of 
plank  nailed  over  their  rents;  just  rough  enough  to  let  the  little  flat-footed 
fisher-children  haul  or  tvi^ist  themselves  up  to  the  gunwales,  and  drop  back 
again  along  some  stray  rope ;  just  round  enough  to  remind  us,  in  their  broad 
and  gradual  curves,  of  the  sweep  of  the  green  surges  they  know  so  well,  and 
of  the  hours  when  those  old  sides  of  seared  timber,  all  ashine  with  the  sea, 
plunge  and  dip  into  the  deep  green  purity  of  the  mounded  waves  more  joyfully 
than  a  deer  lies  down  among  the  grass  of  Spring,  the  soft  white  cloud  of  foam 
opening  momentarily  at  the  bows,  and  fading  or  flying  high  into  the  breeze 
where  the  sea-gulls  toss  and  shriek,  —  the  joy  and  beauty  of  it,  all  the  while, 
so  mingled  with  the  sense  of  unfathomable  danger,  and  the  human  effort  and 
sorrow  going  on  perpetually  from  age  to  age,  waves  rolling  forever,  and 
winds  moaning  forever,  and  faithful  hearts  trusting  and  sickening  forever, 
and  brave  lives  dashed  away  about  the  rattling  beach  like  weeds  forever ;  and 
still  at  the  helm  of  every  lonely  boat,  through  starless  night  and  hopeless 
dawn.  His  hand,  who  spread  the  fisher's  net  over  the  dust  of  the  Sidonian 
palaces,  and  gave  into  the  fisher's  hand  the  keys  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven." 

It  is  a  grand  passage,  ruined,  I  think,  by  excess  of  eagerness 
and  sympathetic  passion.  Neither  Shelley  nor  Keats  ever  flung 
his  soul  more  keenly  into  an  inert  object  and  made  it  live  to  us, 
or  rather,  lived  in  it,  felt  its  heart  beat  in  his,  and  made  his  own 
its  sorrows,  its  battles,  its  pride.  So  Tennyson  gazing  on  the 
Yew  which  covers  the  loved  grave  cries  out  — 

"  I  seem  to  fail  from  out  my  blood 
And  grow  incorporate  into  thee." 

So  the  poet  sees  the  ship  that  brings  his  lost  Arthur  home,  hears 
the  noise  about  the  keel,  and  the  bell  struck  in  the  night.  Thus 
Ruskin,  watching  the  fisherman's  boat  upon  the  beach,  sees  in 
his  mind's  eye  the  past  and  the  future  of  the  boat,  the  swell  of  the 
green  billows,  and  the  roar  of  the  ocean,  and  still  at  the  helm, 
unseen  but  of  him,  an  Almighty  Hand  guiding  it  in  hfe  and  in 
death. 

Had  this  noble  vision  been  rehearsed  with  less  passion,  and  in 
sober  intervals  of  breathing,  we  could  have  borne  it.  The  first 
twelve  or  fourteen  lines,  ending  with  "the  deep  green  purity  of 
the  mounded  waves,"  form  a  full  picture.  But,  like  a  runaway 
horse,  our  poet  plunges  on  where  no  human  lungs  and  no  ordinary 


RUSKIN   AS  MASTER  OF  PROSE  21 7 

brain  can  keep  up  the  giddy  pace;  and  for  seven  or  eight  h"nes 
more  we  are  peked  with  new  images  till  we  feel  like  landsmen 
caught  in  a  sudden  squall.  And  then  how  grand  are  the  last  ten 
lines  —  "the  human  effort  and  sorrow  going  on  perpetually  from 
age  to  age "  — !  down  to  that  daring  antithesis  of  the  fishermen 
of  Tyre  and  the  fisherman  of  St.  Peter's  !  I  cannot  call  it  a  con- 
ceit: but  it  would  have  been  a  conceit  in  the  hands  of  any  one 
less  sincere,  less  passionate,  not  so  perfectly  saturated  with  Biblical 
imagery  and  language. 

I  have  dwelt  upon  this  passage  as  a  typical  example  of  Ruskin's 
magnificent  power  over  the  literary  instrument,  of  his  intense 
sympathy,  of  his  vivid  imagination,  and  alas  !  also  of  his  ungov- 
ernable flux  of  ideas  and  of  words.  It  is  by  reason  of  this  wilful 
megalomania  and  plethoric  habit,  that  we  must  hesitate  to  pro- 
nounce him  the  greatest  master  of  English  prose  in  our  whole 
literature:  but  it  is  such  mastery  over  language,  such  power  to 
triumph  over  almost  impossible  conditions  and  difficulties,  that 
compel  us  to  regard  him  as  one  who  could  have  become  the  noblest 
master  of  prose  ever  recorded,  if  he  would  only  have  set  himself 
to  curb  his  Pegasus  from  the  first,  and  systematically  to  think  of 
his  reader's  capacity  for  taking  in,  as  well  as  of  his  own  capacity 
for  pouring  forth,  a  torrent  of  glowing  thoughts. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  John  Ruskin  himself  undertook  to  curb 
his  Pegasus,  and,  like  Turner  or  Beethoven,  distinctly  formed 
and  practised  "a  second  manner."  That  second  manner  coin- 
cides with  the  great  change  in  his  career,  when  he  passed  from 
critic  of  art  to  be  social  reformer  and  moral  philosopher.  The 
change  was  of  course  not  absolute;  but  whereas,  in  the  earlier 
half  of  his  life,  he  had  been  a  writer  about  Beauty  and  Art,  who 
wove  into  his  teaching  lessons  on  social,  moral,  and  religious 
problems,  so  he  became,  in  the  later  part  of  his  life,  a  worker  about 
Society  and  Ethics,  who  filled  his  practical  teaching  with  judg- 
ments about  the  beautiful  in  Nature  and  in  Art.  That  second 
career  dates  from  about  the  year  i860,  when  he  began  to  write 
Unto  this  Last,  which  was  finally  published  in  1862. 

I  myself  judge  that  book  to  be  not  only  the  most  original  and 
creative  work  of  John  Ruskin,  but  the  most  original  and  creative 
work  in  pure  literature  since  Sartor  Resartus.  But  I  am  now 
concerning  myself  with  form :  and,  as  a  matter  of  form,  I  would 
point  to  it  as  a  work  containing  almost  all  that  is  noble  in  Ruskin's 
written  prose,  with  hardly  any,  or  very  few,  of  his  excesses  and 


2l8  FREDERIC  HARRISON 

mannerisms.  It  is  true,  that,  pp.  147-8,  we  have  a  single  sentence 
of  242  words  and  52  intermediate  stops  before  we  come  to  the 
pause.  But  this  is  occasional;  and  the  book  as  a  whole  is  a 
masterpiece  of  pure,  incisive,  imaginative,  lucid  English.  If  one 
had  to  plead  the  cause  of  Ruskin  before  the  Supreme  Court  in 
the  Republic  of  Letters,  one  would  rely  on  that  book  as  a  type 
of  clearness,  wit,  eloquence,  versatility,  passion. 

From  the  publication  of  Unto  this  Last,  in  1862,  John  Ruskin 
distinctly  adopted  his  later  manner.  Two  volumes  of  selections 
from  Ruskin's  works  were  published  in  1893  ^y  George  Allen, 
the  compilation  of  some  anonymous  editor.  They  are  of  nearly 
equal  size  and  of  periods  of  equal  length.  The  first  series  consists 
of  extracts  between  1843  ^^^  i860  from  Modern  Painters,  Seven 
Lamps,  Stones  of  Venice,  and  minor  lectures,  articles,  and  letters 
anterior  to  i860.  The  second  series,  1 860-1 888,  contains  selec- 
tions from  Unto  this  Last,  Fors,  Prczterita,  and  the  lectures  and 
treatises  subsequent  to  i860.  Now,  it  will  be  seen  that  in  the 
second  series  the  style  is  more  measured,  more  mature,  more 
practical,  more  simple.  It  is  rare  to  find  the  piirpiirei  panni 
which  abound  in  the  first  series,  or  the  sentences  of  200  words,  or 
the  ostentatious  piling  up  of  luscious  imagery,  and  tumultuous 
fugues  in  oral  symphony.  The  "first  state"  of  a  plate  by  Ruskin 
has  far  richer  effects  and  more  vivid  light  and  shade  than  any 
example  of  his  "second  state." 

Alas !  the  change  came  too  late  —  too  late  in  his  life,  too  late 
in  his  career.  When  Unto  this  Last  was  finally  published,  John 
Ruskin  was  forty-three :  he  had  already  written  the  most  elaborate 
and  systematic  of  all  his  books  —  those  on  which  his  world-wide 
fame  still  rests.  He  had  long  past  //  mezzo  del  cammin  di  nostra 
vita  *  —  and  even  the  middle  of  his  own  long  life :  his  energy, 
his  health,  his  hopes,  were  not  what  they  had  been  in  his  glorious 
youth  and  early  manhood :  his  mission  became  consciously  to 
raise  men's  moral  standard  in  life,  not  to  raise  their  sense  of  the 
beautiful  in  Art.  The  old  mariner  still  held  us  with  his  glistening 
eye,  and  forced  us  to  listen  to  his  wondrous  tale,  but  he  spoke  like  a 
man  whose  voice  shook  with  the  memory  of  all  that  he  had  seen 
and  known,  over  whom  the  deep  waters  had  passed.  I  am  one 
of  those  who  know  that  John  Ruskin  has  told  us  in  his  second 
life  things  more  true  and  more  important  even  than  he  told  us 
in  his  first  life.     But  yet  I  cannot  bring  myself  to  hold  that,  as 

'  [The  middle  of  the  highway  of  our  life.] 


RUSKIN  AS  MASTER   OF  PROSE  219 

magician  of  words,  his  la,ter  teaching  has  the  mystery  and  the 
glory  which  hung  round  the  honeyed  Hps  of  the  "  Oxford  graduate." 
If,  then,  John  Ruskin  be  not  in  actual  achievement  the  greatest 
master  who  ever  wrote  in  English  prose,  it  is  only  because  he 
refused  to  chasten  his  passion  and  his  imagination  until  the  prime 
of  life  was  past.     A  graceful  poet  and  a  great  moralist  said :  — 

"Prune  thou  thy  words;    the  thoughts  control 
That  o'er  thee  swell  and  throng :  — 
They  will  condense  within  thy  soul, 
And  change  to  purpose  strong." 

This  lesson  Ruskin  never  learned  until  he  was  growing  gray,  and 
even  now  he  only  observes  it  so  long  as  the  spirit  moves  him,  or 
rather  does  not  move  him  too  keenly.  He  has  rarely  suffered 
his  thoughts  to  condense  within  his  soul.  Far  from  controlling 
them,  he  has  spurred  and  lashed  them  into  fury,  so  that  they  swell 
and  throng  over  him  and  his  readers,  too  often  changing  into 
satiety  and  impotence.  Every  other  faculty  of  a  great  master 
of  speech,  except  reserve,  husbanding  of  resources,  and  patience, 
he  possesses  in  measure  most  abundant  —  lucidity,  purity,  bril- 
Hance,  elasticity,  wit,  fire,  passion,  imagination,  majesty,  with  a 
mastery  over  all  the  melody  of  cadence  that  has  tio  rival  in  the 
whole  range  of  English  literature. 


X 

CHARLES   LAMB 

(1775-1834) 

ON   THE   TRAGEDIES    OF   SHAKESPEARE 
Considered  with  Reference  to  their  Fitness  for  Stage  Representation. 

[Published  in  181 1  in  Hunt's  Reflector. '\ 

Taking  a  turn  the  other  day  in  the  Abbey,  I  was  struck  with  the 
affected  attitude  of  a  figure,  which  I  do  not  remember  to  have 
seen  before,  and  which  upon  examination  proved  to  be  a  whole- 
length  of  the  celebrated  Mr.  Garrick.  Though  I  would  not  go  so 
far  with  some  good  Catholics  abroad  as  to  shut  players  altogether 
out  of  consecrated  ground,  yet  I  own  I  was  not  a  little  scandalized 
at  the  introduction  of  theatrical  airs  and  gestures  into  a  place  set 
apart  to  remind  us  of  the  saddest  realities.  Going  nearer,  I  found 
inscribed  under  this  harlequin  figure  the  following  lines :  — 

To  paint  fair  Nature,  by  divine  command, 
Her  magic  pencil  in  his  glowing  hand, 
A  Shakespeare  rose ;   then,  to  expand  his  fame 
Wide  o'er  this  breathing  world,  a  Garrick  came. 
Though  sunk  in  death  the  forms  the  Poet  drew, 
The  Actor's  genius  made  them  breathe  anew ; 
Though,  like  the  bard  himself,  in  night  they  lay, 
Immortal  Garrick  call'd  them  back  to  day: 
And  till  Eternity  with  power  sublime 
Shall  mark  the  mortal  hour  of  hoary  Time, 
Shakespeare  and  Garrick  like  twin-stars  shall  shine, 
I  And  earth  irradiate  with  a  beam  divine. 

It  would  be  an  insult  to  my  readers'  understandings  to  attempt 
anything  like  a  criticism  on  this  farrago  of  false  thoughts  and  non- 
sense. But  the  reflection  it  led  me  into  was  a  kind  of  wonder,  how 
from  the  days  of  the  actor  here  celebrated  to  our  own,  it  should  have 

220 


TRAGEDIES  OF  SHAKESPEARE  221 

been  the  fashion  to  compliment  every  performer  in  his  turn,  that 
has  had  the  luck  to  please  the  town  in  any  of  the  great  characters 
of  Shakespeare,  with  the  notion  of  possessing  a  mind  congenial 
with  the  poefs:  how  people  should  come  thus  unaccountably 
to  confound  the  power  of  originating  poetical  images  and  concep- 
tions with  the  faculty  of  being  able  to  read  or  recite  the  same  when 
put  into  words ;  ^  or  what  connection  that  absolute  mastery  over  the 
heart  and  soul  of  man,  which  a  great  dramatic  poet  possesses,  has 
with  those  low  tricks  upon  the  eye  and  ear,  which  a  player  by  ob- 
serving a  few  general  effects,  which  some  common  passion,  as  grief, 
anger,  &c.,  usually  has  upon  the  gestures  and  exterior,  can  so  easily 
compass.  To  know  the  internal  workings  and  movements  of  a 
great  mind,  of  an  Othello  or  a  Hamlet  for  instance,  the  when  and 
the  why  and  the  how  far  they  should  be  moved;  to  what  pitch  a 
passion  is  becoming;  to  give  the  reins  and  to  pull  in  the  curb  ex- 
actly at  the  moment  when  the  drawing  in  or  the  slacking  is  most 
graceful ;  seems  to  demand  a  reach  of  intellect  of  a  vastly  different 
extent  from  that  which  is  employed  upon  the  bare  imitation  of  the 
signs  of  these  passions  in  the  countenance  or  gesture,  which  signs 
are  usually  observed  to  be  most  lively  and  emphatic  in  the  weaker 
sort  of  minds,  and  which  signs  can  after  all  but  indicate  some  pas- 
sion, as  I  said  before,  anger,  or  grief,  generally ;  but  of  the  motives 
and  grounds  of  the  passion,  wherein  it  differs  from  the  same  passion 
in  low  and  vulgar  natures,  of  these  the  actor  can  give  no  more  idea 
by  his  face  or  gesture  than  the  eye  (without  a  metaphor)  can  s^eak, 
or  the  muscles  utter  intelligible  sounds.  But  such  is  the  instantane- 
ous nature  of  the  impressions  which  we  take  in  at  the  eye  and  ear 
at  a  playhouse,  compared  with  the  slow  apprehension  oftentimes 
of  the  understanding  in  reading,  that  we  are  apt  not  only  to  sink 
the  play-writer  in  the  consideration  which  we  pay  to  the  actor,  but 
even  to  identify  in  our  minds  in  a  perverse  manner,  the  actor  with 
the  character  which  he  represents.  It  is  difficult  for  a  frequent 
play-goer  to  disembarrass  the  idea  of  Hamlet  from  the  person 
and  voice  of  Mr.  K.  We  speak  of  Lady  Macbeth,  while  we  are  in 
reality  thinking  of  Mrs.  S.     Nor  is  this  confusion  incidental  alone 

'  It  is  observable  that  we  fall  into  this  confusion  only  in  dramatic  recitations. 
We  never  dream  that  the  gentleman  who  reads  Lucretius  in  public  with  great  ap- 
plause, is  therefore  a  great  poet  and  philosopher;  nor  do  we  find  that  Tom  Davies, 
the  bookseller,  who  is  recorded  to  have  recited  the  Paradise  Lost  better  than  any 
man  in  England  in  his  day  (though  I  cannot  help  thinking  there  must  be  some 
mistake  in  this  tradition)  was  therefore,  by  his  intimate  friends,  set  upon  a  level 
with  Milton. 


222  CHARLES   LAMB 

to  unlettered  persons,  who,  not  possessing  the  advantage  of  read- 
ing, are  necessarily  dependent  upon  the  stage-player  for  all  the 
pleasure  which  they  can  receive  from  the  drama,  and  to  whom  the 
very  idea  of  what  an  author  is  cannot  be  made  comprehensible 
without  some  pain  and  perplexity  of  mind :  the  error  is  one  from 
which  persons  otherwise  not  meanly  lettered,  find  it  almost  impos- 
sible to  extricate  themselves. 

Never  let  me  be  so  ungrateful  as  to  forget  the  very  high  degree  of 
satisfaction  which  I  received  some  years  back  from  seeing  for  the 
first  time  a  tragedy  of  Shakespeare  performed,  in  which  those  two 
great  performers  sustained  the  principal  parts.  It  seemed  to  em- 
body and  realize  conceptions  which  had  hitherto  assumed  no  dis- 
tinct shape.  But  dearly  do  we  pay  all  our  life  after  for  this  juvenile 
pleasure,  this  sense  of  distinctness.  When  the  novelty  is  past,  we 
find  to  our  cost  that,  instead  of  realizing  an  idea,  we  have  only 
materialized  and  brought  down  a  fine  vision  to  the  standard  of  flesh 
and  blood.  We  have  let  go  a  dream,  in  quest  of  an  unattainable 
substance. 

How  cruelly  this  operates  upon  the  mind,  to  have  its  free  con- 
ceptions thus  cramped  and  pressed  down  to  the  measure  of  a  strait- 
lacing  actuality,  may  be  judged  from  that  delightful  sensation  of 
freshness,  with  which  we  turn  to  those  plays  of  Shakespeare  which 
have  escaped  being  performed,  and  to  those  passages  in  the  acting 
plays  of  the  same  writer  which  have  happily  been  left  out  in  the  per- 
form'ance.  How  far  the  very  custom  of  hearing  anything  spouted, 
withers  and  blows  upon  a  fine  passage,  may  be  seen  in  those 
speeches  from  Henry  the  Fifth,  &c.,  which  are  current  in  the  mouths 
of  school-boys  from  their  being  to  be  found  in  Enfield  Speakers, 
and  such  kind  of  books.  I  confess  myself  utterly  unable  to  appre- 
ciate that  celebrated  soliloquy  in  Hamlet,  beginning  "To  be  or  not 
to  be,"  or  to  tell  whether  it  be  good,  bad,  or  indifferent,  it  has  been 
so  handled  and  pawed  about  by  declamatory  boys  and  men,  and 
torn  so  inhumanly  from  its  living  place  and  principle  of  continuity 
in  the  play,  till  it  is  become  to  me  a  perfect  dead  member. 

It  may  seem  a  paradox,  but  I  cannot  help  being  of  opinion  that 
the  plays  of  Shakespeare  are  less  calculated  for  performance  on  a 
stage,  than  those  of  almost  any  other  dramatist  whatever.  Their 
distinguishing  excellence  is  a  reason  that  they  should  be  so.  There 
is  so  much  in  them,  which  comes  not  under  the  province  of  acting, 
with  which  eye,  and  tone,  and  gesture,  have  nothing  to  do. 

The  glory  of  the  scenic  art  is  to  personate  passion,  and  the  turns 


TRAGEDIES  OF  SHAKESPEARE  223 

of  passion;  and  the  more  coarse  and  palpable  the  passion  is,  the 
more  hold  upon  the  eyes  and  ears  of  the  spectators  the  performer 
obviously  possesses.  For  this  reason,  scolding  scenes,  scenes  where 
two  persons  talk  themselves  into  a  fit  of  fury,  and  then  in  a  surpris- 
ing manner  talk  themselves  out  of  it  again,  have  always  been  the 
most  popular  upon  our  stage.  And  the  reason  is  plain,  because  the 
spectators  are  here  most  palpably  appealed  to,  they  are  the  proper 
judges  in  this  war  of  words,  they  are  the  legitimate  ring  that  should 
be  formed  round  such  "intellectual  prize-fighters."  Talking  is  the 
direct  object  of  the  imitation  here.  But  in  all  the  best  dramas,  and 
in  Shakespeare  above  all,  how  obvious  it  is,  that  the  form  of  speak- 
ing, whether  it  be  in  soliloquy  or  dialogue,  is  only  a  medium,  and 
often  a  highly  artificial  one,  for  putting  the  reader  or  spectator  into 
possession  of  that  knowledge  of  the  inner  structure  and  workings  of 
mind  in  a  character,  which  he  could  otherwise  never  have  arrived 
at  in  that  form  of  cow  position  by  any  gift  short  of  intuition.  We  do 
here  as  we  do  with  novels  written  in  the  epistolary  form.  How 
many  improprieties,  perfect  solecisms  in  letter-writing,  do  we  put 
up  with  in  Clarissa  and  other  books,  for  the  sake  of  the  delight 
which  that  form  upon  the  whole  gives  us. 

But  the  practice  of  stage  representation  reduces  everything  to  a 
controversy  of  elocution.  Every  character,  from  the  boisterous 
blasphemings  of  Bajazet  to  the  shrinking  timidity  of  womanhood, 
must  play  the  orator.  The  love-dialogues  of  Romeo  and  Juliet, 
those  silver-sweet  sounds  of  lovers'  tongues  by  night;  the  more 
intimate  and  sacred  sweetness  of  nuptial  colloquy  between  an 
Othello  or  a  Posthumus  with  their  married  wives,  all  those  delica- 
cies which  are  so  delightful  in  the  reading,  as  w^hen  we  read  of  those 
youthful  dalliances  in  Paradise  — 

As  beseem'd 

Fair  couple  link'd  in  happy  nuptial  league, 
Alone : 

by  the  inherent  fault  of  stage  representation,  how  are  these  things 
sullied  and  turned  from  their  very  nature  by  being  exposed  to  a 
large  assembly;  when  such  speeches  as  Imogen  addresses  to  her 
lord,  come  drawling  out  of  the  mouth  of  a  hired  actress,  whose 
courtship,  though  nominally  addressed  to  the  personated  Posthu- 
mus, is  manifestly  aimed  at  the  spectators,  who  are  to  judge  of  her 
endearments  and  her  returns  of  love. 

The  character  of  Hamlet  is  perhaps  that  by  which,  since  the  days 
of  Betterton,  a  succession  of  popular  performers  have  had  the 


224  CHARLES  LAMB 

greatest  ambition  to  distinguish  themselves.  The  length  of  the 
part  may  be  one  of  their  reasons.  But  for  the  character  itself,  we 
find  it  in  a  play,  and  therefore  we  judge  it  a  fit  subject  of  dramatic 
representation.  The  play  itself  abounds  in  maxims  and  reflections 
beyond  any  other,  and  therefore  we  consider  it  as  a  proper  vehicle 
for  conveying  moral  instruction.  But  Hamlet  himself  —  what 
does  he  suffer  meanwhile  by  being  dragged  forth  as  a  public  school- 
master, to  give  lectures  to  the  crowd !  Why,  nine  parts  in  ten  of 
what  Hamlet  does,  are  transactions  between  himself  and  his  moral 
sense,  they  are  the  effusions  of  his  solitary  musings,  which  he  retires 
to  holes  and  corners  and  the  most  sequestered  parts  of  the  palace 
to  pour  forth;  or  rather,  they  are  the  silent  meditations  with  which 
his  bosom  is  bursting,  reduced  to  words  for  the  sake  of  the  reader, 
who  must  else  remain  ignorant  of  what  is  passing  there.  These 
profound  sorrows,  these  light-and-noise-abhorring  ruminations, 
which  the  tongue  scarce  dares  utter  to  deaf  walls  and  chambers, 
how  can  they  be  represented  by  a  gesticulating  actor,  who  comes 
and  mouths  them  out  before  an  audience,  making  four  hundred 
people  his  confidants  at  once  ?  I  say  not  that  it  is  the  fault  of  the 
actor  so  to  do ;  he  must  pronounce  them  ore  rotundo,^  he  must  ac- 
company them  with  his  eye,  he  must  insinuate  them  into  his  audi- 
tory by  some  trick  of  eye,  tone,  or  gesture,  or  he  fails.  He  must 
be  thinking  all  the  while  of  his  appearance,  because  he  knows  that 
all  the  while  the  spectators  are  judging  of  it.  And  this  is  the  way 
to  represent  the  shy,  negligent,  retiring  Hamlet. 

It  is  true  that  there  is  no  other  mode  of  conveying  a  vast  quantity 
of  thought  and  feeling  to  a  great  portion  of  the  audience,  who  other- 
wise would  never  learn  it  for  themselves  by  reading,  and  the  intel- 
lectual acquisition  gained  this  way  may,  for  aught  I  know,  be  in- 
estimable ;  but  I  am  not  arguing  that  Hamlet  should  not  be  acted, 
but  how  much  Hamlet  is  made  another  thing  by  being  acted.  I 
have  heard  much  of  the  wonders  which  Garrick  performed  in  this 
part;  but  as  I  never  saw  him,  I  must  have  leave  to  doubt  whether 
the  representation  of  such  a  character  came  within  the  province  of 
his  art.  Those  who  tell  me  of  him,  speak  of  his  eye,  of  the  magic 
of  his  eye,  and  of  his  commanding  voice:  physical  properties, 
vastly  desirable  in  an  actor,  and  without  which  he  can  never  insinu- 
ate meaning  into  an  auditory,  —  but  what  have  they  to  do  with 
Hamlet  ?  what  have  they  to  do  with  intellect  ?  In  fact,  the  things 
aimed  at  in  theatrical  representation,  are  to  arrest  the  spectator's  eye 

*  [With  full  voice.] 


TRAGEDIES  OF  SHAKESPEARE  225 

upon  the  form  and  the  gesture,  and  so  to  gain  a  more  favourable 
hearing  to  what  is  spoken :  it  is  not  what  the  character  is,  but  how 
he  loolvs;  not  what  he  says,  but  how  he  speaks  it.  I  see  no  rea- 
son to  think  that  if  the  play  of  Hamlet  were  written  over  again  by 
some  such  writer  as  Banks  or  Lillo,  retaining  the  process  of  the  story, 
but  totally  omitting  all  the  poetry  of  it,  all  the  divine  features  of 
Shakespeare,  his  stupendous  intellect;  and  only  taking  care  to  give 
us  enough  of  passionate  dialogue,  which  Banks  or  Lillo  were  never 
at  a  loss  to  furnish ;  I  see  not  how  the  effect  could  be  much  differ- 
ent upon  an  audience,  nor  how  the  actor  has  it  in  his  power  to 
represent  Shakespeare  to  us  differently  from  his  representation  of 
Banks  or  Lillo.  Hamlet  would  still  be  a  youthful  accomplished 
prince,  and  must  be  gracefully  personated;  he  might  be  puzzled 
in  his  mind,  wavering  in  his  conduct,  seemingly  cruel  to  Ophelia, 
he  might  see  a  ghost,  and  start  at  it,  and  address  it  kindly  when  he 
found  it  to  be  his  father;  all  this  in  the  poorest  and  most  homely 
language  of  the  servilest  creeper  after  nature  that  ever  consulted 
the  palate  of  an  audience;  without  troubling  Shakespeare  for  the 
matter :  and  I  see  not  but  there  would  be  room  for  all  the  power 
which  an  actor  has,  to  display  itself.  All  the  passions  and  changes 
of  passion  might  remain ;  for  those  are  much  less  difficult  to  write 
or  act  than  is  thought ;  it  is  a  trick  easy  to  be  attained ,  it  is  but  rising 
or  falling  a  note  or  two  in  the  voice,  a  whisper  with  a  significant 
foreboding  look  to  announce  its  approach,  and  so  contagious  the 
counterfeit  appearance  of  any  emotion  is,  that  let  the  words  be 
what  they  will,  the  look  and  tone  shall  carry  it  off  and  make  it  pass 
for  deep  skill  in  the  passions. 

It  is  common  for  people  to  talk  of  Shakespeare's  plays  being  so 
natural,  that  everybody  can  understand  him.  They  are  natural 
indeed,  they  are  grounded  deep  in  nature,  so  deep  that  the  depth 
of  them  lies  out  of  the  reach  of  most  of  us.  You  shall  hear  the 
same  persons  say  that  George  Barnwell  is  very  natural,  and  Othello 
is  very  natural,  that  they  are  both  very  deep;  and  to  them  they 
are  the  same  kind  of  thing.  At  the  one  they  sit  and  shed  tears, 
because  a  good  sort  of  young  man  is  tempted  by  a  naughty  woman 
to  commit  a  trifling  peccadillo,  the  murder  of  an  uncle  or  so,^ 

>  If  this  note  could  hope  to  meet  the  eye  of  any  of  the  Managers,  I  would  entreat 
and  beg  of  them,  in  the  name  of  both  the  Galleries,  that  this  insult  upon  the  morality 
of  the  common  people  of  London  should  cease  to  be  eternally  repeated  in  the  holi- 
day weeks.  Why  are  the  'Prentices  of  this  famous  and  well-governed  city,  instead 
of  an  amusement,  to  be  treated  over  and  over  a'^'ain  with  a  nauseous  sermon  of 
George  Barnwell?     Why  at  the  end  of  their  vistas  are  we  to  place  the  gallows? 

Q 


226  CHARLES  LAMB 

that  is  all,  and  so  comes  to  an  untimely  end,  which  is  so  moving; 
and  at  the  other,  because  a  blackamoor  in  a  fit  of  jealousy  kills 
his  innocent  white  wife :  and  the  odds  are  that  ninety-nine  out  of  a 
hundred  would  willingly  behold  the  same  catastrophe  happen  to 
both  the  heroes,  and  have  thought  the  rope  more  due  to  Othello 
than  to  Barnwell.  For  of  the  texture  of  Othello's  mind,  the  inward 
construction  marvellously  laid  open  with  all  its  strengths  and 
weaknesses,  its  heroic  confidences  and  its  human  misgivings,  its 
agonies  of  hate  springing  from  the  depths  of  love,  they  see  no  more 
than  the  spectators  at  a  cheaper  rate,  who  pay  their  pennies  apiece 
to  look  through  the  man's  telescope  in  Leicester  Fields,  see  into 
the  inward  plot  and  topography  of  the  moon.  Some  dim  thing  or 
other  they  see,  they  see  an  actor  personating  a  passion,  of  grief, 
or  anger,  for  instance,  and  they  recognize  it  as  a  copy  of  the  usual 
external  effects  of  such  passions;  or  at  least  as  being  true  to  that 
symbol  of  the  emotion  which  passes  current  at  the  theatre  for  it, 
for  it  is  often  no  more  than  that :  but  of  the  grounds  of  the  passion, 
its  correspondence  to  a  great  or  heroic  nature,  which  is  the  only 
worthy  object  of  tragedy,  —  that  common  auditors  know  anything 
of  this,  or  can  have  any  such  notions  dinned  into  them  by  the  mere 
strength  of  an  actor's  lungs,  —  that  apprehensions  foreign  to  them 
should  be  thus  infused  into  them  by  storm,  I  can  neither  believe, 
nor  understand  how  it  can  be  possible. 

We  talk  of  Shakespeare's  admirable  observation  of  life,  when  we 
should  feel,  that  not  from  a  petty  inquisition  into  those  cheap  and 
everyday  characters  which  surrounded  him,  as  they  surround  us, 
but  from  his  own  mind,  which  was,  to  borrow  a  phrase  of  Ben 
Jonson's,  the  very  "sphere  of  humanity,"  he  fetched  those  images 
of  virtue  and  of  knowledge,  of  which  every  one  of  us  recognizing 
a  part,  think  we  comprehend  in  our  natures  the  whole ;  and  often- 
times mistake  the  powers  which  he  positively  creates  in  us,  for 
nothing  more  than  indigenous  faculties  of  our  own  minds,  which 
only  waited  the  application  of  corresponding  virtues  in  him  to  re- 
turn a  full  and  clear  echo  of  the  same. 

To  return  to  Hamlet.  —  Among  the  distinguishing  features  of 
that  wonderful  character,  one  of  the  most  interesting  (yet  painful) 

Were  I  an  uncle,  I  should  not  much  like  a  nephew  of  mine  to  have  such  an  example 
placed  before  his  eyes.  It  is  really  making  uncle-murder  too  trivial  to  exhibit  it 
as  done  upon  such  slight  motives;  —  it  is  attributing  too  much  to  such  charac- 
ters as  Millwood;  it  is  jjutting  things  into  the  heads  of  good  young  men,  which  they 
would  never  otherwise  have  dreamed  of.  Uncles  that  think  anything  of  their  lives, 
should  fairly  petition  the  Chamberlain  against  it. 


TRAGEDIES  OF  SHAKESPEARE  227 

is  that  soreness  of  mind  which  makes  him  treat  the  intrusions  of 
Polonius  with  harshness,  and  that  asperity  which  he  puts  on  in  his 
interviews  with  Opheha.  These  tokens  of  an  unhinged  mind  (if 
they  be  not  mixed  in  the  latter  case  with  a  profound  artifice  of  love, 
to  alienate  Ophelia  by  affected  discourtesies,  so  to  prepare  her  mind 
for  the  breaking  off  of  that  loving  intercourse,  which  can  no  longer 
find  a  place  amidst  business  so  serious  as  that  which  he  has  to  do) 
are  parts  of  his  character,  which  to  reconcile  with  our  admiration 
of  Hamlet,  the  most  patient  consideration  of  his  situation  is  no  more 
than  necessary ;  they  are  what  we  forgive  afterwards,  and  explain 
by  the  whole  of  his  character,  but  at  the  time  they  are  harsh  and 
unpleasant.  Yet  such  is  the  actor's  necessity  of  giving  strong  blows 
to  the  audience,  that  I  have  never  seen  a  player  in  this  character, 
who  did  not  exaggerate  and  strain  to  the  utmost  these  ambiguous 
features,  —  these  temporary  deformities  in  the  character.  They 
make  him  express  a  vulgar  scorn  at  Polonius  which  utterly  de- 
grades his  gentility,  and  which  no  explanation  can  render  palatable; 
they  make  him  show  contempt,  and  curl  up  the  nose  at  Ophelia's 
father,  —  contempt  in  its  very  grossest  and  most  hateful  form ; 
but  they  get  applause  by  it:  it  is  natural,  people  say;  that  is,  the 
words  are  scornful,  and  the  actor  expresses  scorn,  and  that  they  can 
judge  of :  but  why  so  much  scorn,  and  of  that  sort,  they  never  think 
of  asking. 

So  to  Ophelia.  —  All  the  Hamlets  that  I  have  ever  seen,  rant  and 
rave  at  her  as  if  she  had  committed  some  great  crime,  and  the  audi- 
ence are  highly  pleased,  because  the  words  of  the  part  are  satirical, 
and  they  are  enforced  by  the  strongest  expression  of  satirical  indig- 
nation of  which  the  face  and  voice  are  capable.  But  then,  whether 
Hamlet  is  likely  to  have  put  on  such  brutal  appearances  to  a  lady 
whom  he  loved  so  dearly,  is  never  thought  on.  The  truth  is,  that 
in  all  such  deep  affections  as  had  subsisted  between  Hamlet  and 
Ophelia,  there  is  a  stock  of  supererogatory  love  (if  I  may  venture  to 
use  the  expression),  which  in  any  great  grief  of  heart,  especially 
where  that  which  preys  upon  the  mind  cannot  be  communicated, 
confers  a  kind  of  indulgence  upon  the  grieved  party  to  express 
itself,  even  to  its  heart's  dearest  object,  in  the  language  of  a  tem- 
porary alienation;  but  it  is  not  alienation,  it  is  a  distraction  purely, 
and  so  it  always  makes  itself  to  be  felt  by  that  object :  it  is  not  an- 
ger, but  grief  assuming  the  appearance  6f  anger,  —  love  awkwardly 
counterfeiting  hate,  as  sweet  countenances  when  they  try  to  frown : 
but  such  sternness  and  fierce  disgust  as  Hamlet  is  made  to  show,  is 


228  CHARLES   LAMB 

no  counterfeit,  but  the  real  face  of  absolute  aversion,  —  of  irrecon- 
cilable alienation.  It  may  be  said  he  puts  on  the  madman;  but 
then  he  should  only  so  far  put  on  this  counterfeit  lunacy  as  his  own 
real  distraction  will  give  him  leave;  that  is,  incompletely,  imper- 
fectly; not  in  that  confirmed,  practised  way,  like  a  master  of  his 
art,  or  as  Dame  Quickly  would  say,  "like  one  of  those  harlotry 
players." 

I  mean  no  disrespect  to  any  actor,  but  the  sort  of  pleasure  which 
Shakespeare's  plays  give  in  the  acting  seems  to  me  not  at  all  to 
differ  from  that  which  the  audience  receive  from  those  of  other 
writers;  and,  they  being  in  themselves  essentially  so  different  from 
all  others,  I  must  conclude  that  there  is  something  in  the  nature  of 
acting  which  levels  all  distinctions.  And  in  fact,  who  does  not 
speak  indifferently  of  the  Gamester  and  of  Macbeth  as  fine  stage 
performances,  and  praise  the  Mrs.  Beverley  in  the  same  way 
as  the  Lady  Macbeth  of  Mrs.  S.  ?  Belvidera,  and  Calista,  and 
Isabella,  and  Euphrasia,  are  they  less  liked  than  Imogen,  or  than 
Juliet,  or  than  Desdemona?  Are  they  not  spoken  of  and  remem- 
bered in  the  same  way  ?  Is  not  the  female  performer  as  great  (as 
they  call  it)  in  one  as  in  the  other?  Did  not  Garrick  shine,  and 
was  he  not  ambitious  of  shining  in  every  drawding  tragedy  that  his 
wretched  day  produced,  —  the  productions  of  the  Hills  and  the 
Murphys  and  the  Browns,  —  and  shall  he  have  that  honour  to 
dwell  in  our  minds  forever  as  an  inseparable  concomitant  with 
Shakespeare  ?  A  kindred  mind  !  O  who  can  read  that  affecting 
sonnet  of  Shakespeare  which  alludes  to  his  profession  as  a  player:  — 

Oh  for  my  sake  do  you  with  Fortune  chide, 

The  guiUy  goddess  of  my  harmful  deeds, 

That  did  not  better  for  my  life  provide 

Than  public  means  which  ])ublic  manners  breeds  — 

Thence  comes  it  that  my  name  receives  a  brand; 

And  almost  thence  my  nature  is  subdued 

To  what  it  works  in,  like  the  dyer's  hand 

Or  that  other  confession :  — 

Alas !   'tis  true,  I  have  gone  here  and  there, 

And  made  myself  a  motley  to  the  view, 

Gored  mine  own  thoughts,  sold  cheap  what  is  most  dear  — 

Who  can  read  these  instances  of  jealous  self-watchfulness  in  our 
sweet  Shakespeare,  and  dream  of  any  congeniality  between  him 
and  one  that,  by  every  tradition  of  him,  appears  to  have  been  as 
mere  a  player  as  ever  existed ;  to  have  had  his  mind  tainted  with  the 


TRAGEDIES  OF  SHAKESPEARE  229 

lowest  players'  vices,  —  envy  and  jealousy,  and  miserable  cravincr^ 
after  applause;  one  who  in  th^  exercise  of  his  profession  was 
jealous  even  of  the  women-performers  that  stood  in  his  way;  a 
manager  full  of  managerial  tricks  and  stratage.nj  and  finesse: 
that  any  resemblance  shoa.J  be  dreamed  of  between  him  and 
Shakesoeare,  —  Shakespeare  who,  in  the  plenitude  and  conscious- 
ness of  his  own  powers,  could  with  that  noble  modesty,  which  we 
can  neither  imitate  nor  appreciate,  express  himself  thus  of  his  own 
sense  of  his  own  defects :  — 

Wishing  me  like  to  one  more  rich  in  hope, 
Featured  Hke  him,  like  him  with  friends  possess'd; 
Desiring  this  man's  art,  and  that  man's  scope. 

I  am  almost  disposed  to  deny  to  Garrick  the  merit  of  being  an 
admirer  of  Shakespeare.  A  true  lover  of  his  excellencies  he  cer- 
tainly was  not;  for  would  any  true  lover  of  them  have  admitted 
into  his  matchless  scenes  such  ribald  trash  as  Tate  and  Gibber, 
and  the  rest  of  them,  that 

With  their  darkness  durst  affront  his  light, 

have  foisted  into  the  acting  plays  of  Shakespeare?  I  believe  it 
impossible  that  he  could  have  had  a  proper  reverence  for  Shake- 
speare, and  have  condescended  to  go  through  that  interpolated  scene 
in  Richard  the  Third,  in  which  Richard  tries  to  break  his  wife's 
heart  by  telling  her  he  loves  another  woman,  and  says,  "if  she  sur- 
vives this  she  is  immortal."  Yet  I  doubt  not  he  delivered  this  vul- 
gar stuff  with  as  much  anxiety  of  emphasis  as  any  of  the  genuine 
parts :  and  for  acting,  it  is  as  well  calculated  as  any.  But  we  have 
seen  the  part  of  Richard  lately  produce  great  fame  to  an  actor  by 
his  manner  of  playing  it,  and  it  lets  us  into  the  secret  of  acting,  and 
of  popular  judgments  of  Shakespeare  derived  from  acting.  Not  one 
of  the  spectators  who  have  witnessed  Mr.  G.'s  exertions  in  that 
part,  but  has  come  away  with  a  proper  conviction  that  Richard 
is  a  very  wicked  man,  and  kills  little  children  in  their  beds,  with 
something  like  the  pleasure  which  the  giants  and  ogres  in  children's 
books  are  represented  to  have  taken  in  that  practice;  moreover, 
that  he  is  very  close  and  shrewd  and  devilish  cunning,  for  you  could 
see  that  by  his  eye. 

But  is  in  fact  this  the  impression  we  have  in  reading  the  Richard 
of  Shakespeare  ?  Do  we  feel  anything  like  disgust,  as  we  do  at 
that  butcher-like  representation  of  him  that  passes  for  him  on  the 
stage  ?    A  horror  at  his  crimes  blends  with  the  effect  which  we  feel, 


230 


CHARLES   LAMB 


but  how  is  it  qualified,  how  is  it  carried  off,  by  the  rich  intellect 
which  he  displays,  his  resources,  his  wit,  his  buoyant  spirits,  his 
vast  knowledge  and  insight  into  characters,  the  poetry  of  his  part 
—  not  an  atom  of  all  which  is  made  perceivable  in  Mr.  C.'s  way  of 
acting  it.  Nothing  but  his  crimes,  his  actions,  is  visible;  they  are 
prominent  and  staring;  the  murderer  stands  out,  but  where  is  the 
lofty  genius,  the  man  of  vast  capacity,  —  the  profound,  the  witty, 
accomplished  Richard  ? 

The  truth  is,  the  Characters  of  Shakespeare  are  so  much  the 
objects  of  meditation  rather  than  of  interest  or  curiosity  as  to  their 
actions,  that  while  we  are  reading  any  of  his  great  criminal  char- 
acters, —  Macbeth,  Richard,  even  lago,  —  we  think  not  so  much 
of  the  crimes  which  they  commit,  as  of  the  ambition,  the  aspiring 
spirit,  the  intellectual  activity,  which  prompts  them  to  overleap 
those  moral  fences.  Barnwell  is  a  wretched  murderer;  there  is 
a  certain  fitness  between  his  neck  and  the  rope ;  he  is  the  legitimate 
heir  to  the  gallows;  nobody  who  thinks  at  all  can  think  of  any 
alleviating  circumstances  in  his  case  to  make  him  a  fit  object  of 
mercy.  Or  to  take  an  instance  from  the  higher  tragedy,  what  else 
but  a  mere  assassin  is  Glenalvon !  Do  we  think  of  anything  but 
of  the  crime  which  he  commits,  and  the  rack  which  he  deserves? 
That  is  all  which  we  really  think  about  him.  Whereas  in  corre- 
sponding characters  in  Shakespeare  so  little  do  the  actions  com- 
paratively affect  us,  that  while  the  impulses,  the  inner  mind  in  all 
its  perverted  greatness,  solely  seems  real  and  is  exclusively  attended 
to,  the  crime  is  comparatively  nothing.  But  when  we  see  these 
things  represented,  the  acts  which  they  do  are  comparatively  every- 
thing, their  impulses  nothing.  The  state  of  sublime  emotion  into 
which  we  are  elevated  by  those  images  of  night  and  horror  which 
Macbeth  is  made  to  utter,  that  solemn  prelude  with  which  he  enter- 
tains the  time  till  the  bell  shall  strike  which  is  to  call  him  to  murder 
Duncan,  —  when  we  no  longer  read  it  in  a  book,  when  we  have 
given  up  that  vantage-ground  of  abstraction  which  reading  pos- 
sesses over  seeing,  and  come  to  see  a  man  in  his  bodily  shape  before 
our  eyes  actually  prc])aring  to  commit  a  murder,  if  the  acting  be  true 
and  impressive,  as  I  have  witnessed  it  in  Mr.  K.'s  performance  of 
that  part,  the  yxiinful  anxiety  about  the  act,  the  natural  longing  to 
prevent  it  while  it  yet  seems  unperpetrated,  the  too  close  pressing 
semblance  of  reality,  give  a  pain  and  an  uneasiness  which  totally 
destroy  all  the  delight  which  the  words  in  the  book  convey,  where 
the  deed  doing  never  presses  upon  us  with  the  painful  sense  of  pres- 


TRAGEDIES  OF  SHAKESPEARE 


231 


ence :  it  rather  seems  to  belong  to  history,  —  to  something  past 
and  inevitable,  if  it  has  anything  to  do  with  time  at  all.  The  sub- 
lime images,  the  poetry  alone,  is  that  which  is  present  to  our  minds 
in  the  reading. 

So  to  see  Lear  acted,  —  to  see  an  old  man  tottering  about  the 
stage  with  a  walking-stick,  turned  out  of  doors  by  his  daughters 
in  a  rainy  night,  has  nothing  in  it  but  what  is  painful  and  dis- 
gusting. We  want  to  take  him  into  shelter  and  relieve  him. 
That  is  all  the  feeling  which  the  acting  of  Lear  ever  produced  in 
me.  But  the  Lear  of  Shakespeare  cannot  be  acted.  The  con- 
temptible machinery  by  which  they  mimic  the  storm  which  he  goes 
out  in,  is  not  more  inadequate  to  represent  the  horrors  of  the  real 
elements,  than  any  actor  can  be  to  represent  Lear:  they  might 
more  easily  propose  to  personate  the  Satan  of  Milton  upon  a 
stage,  or  one  of  Michael  Angelo's  terrible  figures.  The  greatness 
of  Lear  is  not  in  corporal  dimension,  but  in  intellectual:  the 
explosions  of  his  passion  are  terrible  as  a  volcano :  they  are  storms 
turning  up  and  disclosing  to  the  bottom  that  sea  his  mind,  with 
all  its  vast  riches.  It  is  his  mind  which  is  laid  bare.  This  case 
of  flesh  and  blood  seems  too  insignificant  to  be  thought  on ;  even 
as  he  himself  neglects  it.  On  the  stage  we  see  nothing  but  cor- 
poral infirmities  and  weakness,  the  impotence  of  rage;  while  we 
read  it,  we  see  not  Lear,  but  we  are  Lear,  —  we  are  in  his  mind, 
we  are  sustained  by  a  grandeur  which  bafilies  the  malice  of  daugh- 
ters and  storms;  in  the  aberrations  of  his  reason,  we  discover  a 
mighty  irregular  power  of  reasoning,  immethodized  from  the 
ordinary  purposes  of  life,  but  exerting  its  powers,  as  the  wind 
blows  where  it  listeth,  at  will  upon  the  corruptions  and  abuses 
of  mankind.  What  have  looks,  or  tones,  to  do  with  that  sub- 
lime identification  of  his  age  with  that  of  the  heavens  themselves, 
when  in  his  reproaches  to  them  for  conniving  at  the  injustice  of 
his  children,  he  reminds  them  that  "they  themselves  are  old"? 
What  gesture  shall  we  appropriate  to  this  ?  What  has  the  voice 
or  the  eye  to  do  with  such  things  ?  But  the.  play  is  beyond  all 
art,  as  the  tamperings  with  it  show:  it  is  too  hard  and  stony; 
it  must  have  love-scenes,  and  a  happy  ending.  It  is  not  enough 
that  Cordelia  is  a  daughter,  she  must  shine  as  a  lover  too.  Tate 
has  put  his  hook  in  the  nostrils  of  this  Leviathan,  for  Garrick 
and  his  followers,  the  showmen  of  the  scene,  to  draw  the  mighty 
beast  about  more  easily.  A  happy  ending !  —  as  if  the  living 
martyrdom  that  Lear  had  gone  through,  —  the  flaying  of  his 


232 


CHARLES  LAMB 


feelings  alive,  did  not  make  a  fair  dismissal  from  the  stage  of  life 
the  only  decorous  thing  for  him.  If  he  is  to  live  and  be  happy 
after,  if  he  could  sustain  this  world's  burden  after,  why  all  this 
putter  and  preparation,  —  why  torment  us  with  all  this  unneces- 
sary sympathy?  As  if  the  childish  pleasure  of  getting  his  gilt 
robes  and  sceptre  again  could  tempt  him  to  act  over  again  his 
misused  station,  —  as  if  at  his  years,  and  with  his  experience, 
anything  was  left  but  to  die. 

Lear  is  essentially  impossible  to  be  represented  on  a  stage. 
But  how  many  dramatic  personages  are  there  in  Shakespeare, 
which  though  more  tractable  and  feasible  (if  I  may  so  speak) 
than  Lear,  yet  from  some  circumstance,  some  adjunct  to  their 
character,  are  improper  to  be  shown  to  our  bodily  eye.  Othello, 
for  instance.  Nothing  can  be  more  soothing,  more  flattering  to 
the  nobler  parts  of  our  natures,  than  to  read  of  a  young  Venetian 
lady  of  highest  extraction,  through  the  force  of  love  and  from  a 
sense  of  merit  in  him  whom  she  loved,  laying  aside  every  con- 
sideration of  kindred,  and  country,  and  colour,  and  wedding 
with  a  coal-black  Moor  —  (for  such  he  is  represented,  in  the  im- 
perfect state  of  knowledge  respecting  foreign  countries  in  those 
days,  compared  with  our  own,  or  in  compliance  with  popular 
notions,  though  the  Moors  are  now  well  enough  known  to  be 
by  many  shades  less  unworthy  of  a  white  woman's  fancy)  —  it  is 
the  perfect  triumph  of  virtue  over  accidents,  of  the  imagination 
over  the  senses.  She  sees  Othello's  colour  in  his  mind.  But 
upon  the  stage,  when  the  imagination  is  no  longer  the  ruling 
faculty,  but  we  are  left  to  our  poor  unassisted  senses,  I  appeal  to 
every  one  that  has  seen  Othello  played,  whether  he  did  not,  on 
the  contrary,  sink  Othello's  mind  in  his  colour;  whether  he  did 
not  tind  something  extremely  revolting  in  the  courtship  and 
wedded  caresses  of  Othello  and  Desdemona;  and  whether  the 
actual  sight  of  the  thing  did  not  overweigh  all  that  beautiful 
compromise  which  we  make  in  reading;  —  and  the  reason  it 
should  do  so  is  obvious,  because  there  is  just  so  much  reality 
presented  to  our  senses  as  to  give  a  perception  of  disagreement, 
with  not  enough  of  belief  in  the  internal  motives,  —  all  that  which 
is  unseen,  —  to  overpower  and  reconcile  the  first  and  obvious 
prejudices.'     What  we  see  upon  a  stage  is  body  and  bodily  action; 

'  The  error  of  supposinp;  that  because  Othello's  colour  does  not  offend  us  in 
the  reading,  it  should  also  not  offend  us  in  the  scein'^.  is  just  such  a  fallacy  as  sup- 
posing that  an  Adam  and  Eve  in  a  picture  shall  affect  us  just  as  they  do  in  the 


TRAGEDIES  OF  SHAKESPEARE  233 

what  we  are  conscious  of  in  reading  is  almost  exclusively  the 
mind,  and  its  movements :  and  this  I  think  may  sufficiently  account 
for  the  very  different  sort  of  delight  with  which  the  same  play 
so  often  affects  us  in  the  reading  and  the  seeing. 

It  requires  little  reflection  to  perceive,  that  if  those  characters 
in  Shakespeare  which  are  within  the  precincts  of  nature,  have 
yet  something  in  them  which  appeals  too  exclusively  to  the  imagi- 
nation, to  admit  of  their  being  made  objects  to  the  senses  with- 
out suffering  a  change  and  a  diminution,  —  that  still  stronger  the 
objection  must  lie  against  representing  another  line  of  characters, 
which  Shakespeare  has  introduced  to  give  a  wildness  and  a  super- 
natural elevation  to  his  scenes,  as  if  to  remove  them  still  farther 
from  that  assimilation  to  common  life  in  which  their  excellence 
is  vulgarly  supposed  to  consist.  When  we  read  the  incantations 
of  those  terrible  beings  the  Witches  in  Macbeth,  though  some 
of  the  ingredients  of  their  hellish  composition  savour  of  the  gro- 
tesque, yet  is  the  effect  upon  us  other  than  the  most  serious  and 
appalling  that  can  be  imagined  ?  Do  we  not  feel  spell-bound 
as  Macbeth  was  ?  Can  any  mirth  accompany  a  sense  of  their 
presence  ?  We  might  as  well  laugh  under  a  consciousness  of  the 
principle  of  Evil  himself  being  truly  and  really  present  with  us. 
But  attempt  to  bring  these  beings  on  to  a  stage,  and  you  turn 
them  instantly  into  so  many  old  women,  that  men  and  children 
are  to  laugh  at.  Contrary  to  the  old  saying,  that  "seeing  is 
believing,"  the  sight  actually  destroys  the  faith:  and  the  mirth 
in  which  we  indulge  at  their  expense,  when  we  see  these  creatures 
upon  a  stage,  seems  to  be  a  sort  of  indemnification  which  we 
make  to  ourselves  for  the  terror  which  they  put  us  in  when  read- 
ing made  them  an  object  of  belief,  —  when  we  surrendered  up 
our  reason  to  the  poet,  as  children  to  their  nurses  and  their  elders; 
and  we  laugh  at  our  fears,  as  children  who  thought  they  saw  some- 
thing in  the  dark,  triumph  when  the  bringing  in  of  a  candle  dis- 
covers the  vanity  of  their  fears.  For  this  exposure  of  super- 
natural agents  upon  a  stage  is  truly  bringing  in  a  candle  to  expose 
their  own  delusiveness.  It  is  the  solitary  taper  and  the  book 
that  generates  a  faith  in  these  terrors:    a  ghost  by  chandeher 

poem.  But  in  the  poem  we  for  a  while  have  Paradisaical  senses  given  us,  which 
vanish  when  we  see  a  man  and  his  wife  without  clothes  in  the  picture.  The  paint- 
ers themselves  feel  this,  as  is  apparent  by  the  awkward  shifts  they  have  recourse  to, 
to  make  them  look  not  quite  naked;  by  a  sort  of  prophetic  anachronism  antedating 
the  invention  of  fig-leaves.  So  in  the  reading  of  the  play,  we  see  with  Desdemona's 
eyes;   in  the  seeing  of  it,  we  are  forced  to  look  with  our  own. 


234  CHARLES  LAMB 

light,  and  in  good  company,  deceives  no  spectators,  —  a  ghost 
that  can  be  measured  by  the  eye,  and  his  human  dimensions 
made  out  at  leisure.  The  sight  of  a  well-lighted  house,  and  a 
well-dressed  audience,  shall  arm  the  most  nervous  child  against 
any  apprehensions:  as  Tom  Brown  says  of  the  impenetrable 
skin  of  Achilles  with  his  impenetrable  armour  over  it,  "Bully 
Dawson  would  have  fought  the  devil  with  such  advantages." 

Much  has  been  said,  and  deservedly,  in  reprobation  of  the  vile 
mixture  which  Dryden  has  thrown  into  the  Tempest:  doubtless 
without  some  such  vicious  alloy,  the  impure  ears  of  that  age  would 
never  have  sate  out  to  hear  so  much  innocence  of  love  as  is  con- 
tained in  the  sweet  courtship  of  Ferdinand  and  Miranda.  But 
is  the  Tempest  of  Shakespeare  at  all  a  subject  for  stage  repre- 
sentation ?  It  is  one  thing  to  read  of  an  enchanter,  and  to  believe 
the  wondrous  tale  while  we  are  reading  it;  but  to  have  a  con- 
jurer brought  before  us  in  his  conjuring-gown,  with  his  spirits 
about  him,  which  none  but  himself  and  some  hundred  of  favoured 
spectators  before  the  curtain  are  supposed  to  see,  involves  such 
a  quantity  of  the  hateful  incredible,  that  all  our  reverence  for  the 
author  cannot  hinder  us  from  perceiving  such  gross  attempts 
upon  the  senses  to  be  in  the  highest  degree  childish  and  inefficient. 
Spirits  and  fairies  cannot  be  represented,  they  cannot  even  be 
painted,  —  they  can  only  be  believed.  But  the  elaborate  and 
anxious  provision  of  scenery,  which  the  luxury  of  the  age  demands, 
in  these  cases  works  a  quite  contrary  effect  to  what  is  intended. 
That  which  in  comedy,  or  plays  of  familiar  life,  adds  so  much 
to  the  life  of  the  imitation,  in  plays  which  appeal  to  the  higher 
faculties,  positively  destroys  the  illusion  which  it  is  introduced 
to  aid.  A  parlour  or  a  drawing-room,  —  a  library  opening  into 
a  garden,  —  a  garden  with  an  alcove  in  it,  —  a  street,  or  the 
piazza  of  Covent  Garden,  does  well  enough  in  a  scene;  we  are 
content  to  give  as  much  credit  to  it  as  it  demands ;  or  rather,  we 
think  little  about  it,  —  it  is  little  more  than  reading  at  the  top 
of  a  page,  "Scene,  a  Garden ; "  we  do  not  imagine  ourselves  there, 
but  we  readily  admit  the  imitation  of  familiar  objects.  Jkit  to 
think  by  the  helj^  of  painted  trees  and  caverns,  which  we  know 
to  be  painted,  to  transport  our  minds  to  Prospero,  and  his  island 
and  his  lonely  cell;  '  or  by  the  aid  of  a  fiddle  dexterously  thrown 

•  It  will  be  said  these  things  are  done  in  pictures.  But  pictures  and  scenes  are 
very  diflerent  things.  Painting  is  a  world  of  itself,  but  in  scene-painting  there  is 
the  attempt  to  deceive;  and  there  is  the  discordancy,  never  to  be  got  over,  between 
painted  scenes  and  real  people. 


TRAGEDIES  OF  SHAKESPEARE  235 

in,  in  an  interval  of  speaking,  to  make  us  believe  that  we  hear 
those  supernatural  noises  of  which  the  isle  was  full :  —  the  Orrery 
Lecturer  at  the  Haymarket  might  as  well  hope,  by  his  musical 
glasses  cleverly  stationed  out  of  sight  behind  his  apparatus,  to 
make  us  believe  that  we  do  indeed  hear  the  crystal  spheres  ring 
out  that  chime,  which  if  it  were  to  inwrap  our  fancy  long,  Milton 
thinks, 

Time  would  run  back  and  fetch  the  age  of  gold, 

And  speckled  vanity 

Would  sicken  soon  and  die, 

And  leprous  Sin  would  melt  from  earthly  mould; 

Yea  Hell  itself  would  pass  away, 

And  leave  its  dolorous  mansions  to  the  peering  day. 

The  Garden  of  Eden,  with  our  first  parents  in  it,  is  not  more 
impossible  to  be  shown  on  a  stage,  than  the  Enchanted  Isle, 
with  its  no  less  interesting  and  innocent  first  settlers. 

The  subject  of  Scenery  is  closely  connected  with  that  of  the 
Dresses,  which  are  so  anxiously  attended  to  on  our  stage.  I  remem- 
ber the  last  time  I  saw  Macbeth  played,  the  discrepancy  I  felt  at 
the  changes  of  garment  which  he  varied,  —  the  shiftings  and 
re-shiftings,  like  a  Romish  priest  at  mass.  The  luxury  of  stage- 
improvements,  and  the  importunity  of  the  public  eye,  require 
this.  The  coronation  robe  of  the  Scottish  monarch  was  fairly 
a  counterpart  to  that  which  our  King  wears  when  he  goes  to  the 
Parliament-house,  —  just  so  full  and  cumbersome,  and  set  out 
with  ermine  and  pearls.  And  if  things  must  be  represented,  I  see 
not  what  to  find  fault  with  in  this.  But  in  reading,  what  robe 
are  we  conscious  of  ?  Some  dim  images  of  royalty  —  a  crown 
and  sceptre,  may  float  before  our  eyes,  but  who  shall  describe 
the  fashion  of  it?  Do  we  see  in  our  mind's  eye  what  Webb  or 
any  other  robe-maker  could  pattern?  This  is  the  inevitable 
consequence  of  imitating  everything,  to  make  all  things  natural. 
Whereas  the  reading  of  a  tragedy  is  a  fine  abstraction.  It  pre- 
sents to  the  fancy  just  so  much  of  external  appearances  as  to  make 
us  feel  that  we  are  among  flesh  and  blood,  while  by  far  the  greater 
and  better  part  of  our  imagination  is  employed  upon  the  thoughts 
and  internal  machinery  of  the  character.  But  in  acting,  scenery, 
dress,  the  most  contemptible  things,  call  upon  us  to  judge  of 
their  naturalness. 

Perhaps  it  would  be  no  bad  similitude,  to  liken  the  pleasure 
which  we  take  in  seeing  one  of  these  fine  plays  acted,  compared 


236  CHARLES  LAMB 

with  that  quiet  deh'ght  which  we  find  in  the  reading  of  it,  to  the 
different  feeUngs  with  which  a  reviewer,  and  a  man  that  is  not  a 
reviewer,  reads  a  fine  poem.  The  accursed  critical  habit,  — 
the  being  called  upon  to  judge  and  pronounce,  must  make  it 
quite  a  different  thing  to  the  former.  In  seeing  these  plays  acted, 
we  are  affected  just  as  judges.  When  Hamlet  compares  the 
two  pictures  of  Gertrude's  first  and  second  husband,  who  wants 
to  see  the  pictures  ?  But  in  the  acting,  a  miniature  must  be  lugged 
out ;  which  we  know  not  to  be  the  picture,  but  only  to  show  how 
finely  a  miniature  may  be  represented.  This  showing  of  every- 
thing, levels  all  things:  it  makes  tricks,  bows,  and  curtseys,  of 
importance.  Mrs.  S.  never  got  more  fame  by  anything  than 
by  the  manner  in  which  she  dismisses  the  guests  in  the  banquet- 
scene  in  Macbeth :  it  is  as  much  remembered  as  any  of  her  thrill- 
ing tones  or  impressive  looks.  But  does  such  a  trifle  as  this  enter 
into  the  imaginations  of  the  reader  of  that  wild  and  wonderful 
scene?  Does  not  the  mind  dismiss  the  feasters  as  rapidly  as  it 
can?  Does  it  care  about  the  gracefulness  of  the  doing  it?  But 
by  acting,  and  judging  of  acting,  all  these  non-essentials  are 
raised  into  an  importance,  injurious  to  the  main  interest  of  the 
play. 

I  have  confined  my  observations  to  the  tragic  parts  of  Shake- 
speare. It  would  be  no  very  difficult  task  to  extend  the  inquiry 
to  his  comedies;  and  to  show  why  Falstaff,  Shallow,  Sir  Hugh 
Evans,  and  the  rest  are  equally  incompatible  with  stage  represen- 
tation. The  length  to  which  this  Essay  has  run,  will  make  it, 
I  am  afraid,  sufficiently  distasteful  to  the  Amateurs  of  the  Theatre, 
without  going  any  deeper  into  the  subject  at  present. 


XI 

HENRY   JAMES 

(1843) 

THE   ART   OF   FICTION 

[Published  in  1884,  in  Longmans'  Magazine.  Reprinted  in  1888  in  Partial 
Portraits.] 

I  SHOULD  not  have  affixed  so  comprehensive  a  title  to  these  few 
remarks,  necessarily  wanting  in  any  completeness  upon  a  subject 
the  full  consideration  of  which  would  carry  us  far,  did  I  not  seem 
to  discover  a  pretext  for  my  temerity  in  the  interesting  pamphlet 
lately  published  under  this  name  by  Mr.  Walter  Besant.  Mr. 
Besant's  lecture  at  the  Royal  Institution  —  the  original  form  of 
his  pamphlet  —  appears  to  indicate  that  many  persons  are  inter- 
ested in  the  art  of  fiction,  and  are  not  indifferent  to  such  remarks, 
as  those  who  practise  it  may  attempt  to  make  about  it.  I  am 
therefore  anxious  not  to  lose  the  benefit  of  this  favourable  asso- 
ciation, and  to  edge  in  a  few  words  under  cover  of  the  attention 
which  Mr.  Besant  is  sure  to  have  excited.  There  is  something 
very  encouraging  in  his  having  put  into  form  certain  of  his  ideas 
on  the  mystery  of  story-telling. 

It  is  a  proof  of  life  and  curiosity  —  curiosity  on  the  part  of 
the  brotherhood  of  novelists  as  well  as  on  the  part  of  their  readers. 
Only  a  short  time  ago  it  might  have  been  supposed  that  the  Eng- 
lish novel  was  not  what  the  French  call  disciitable.  It  had  no 
air  of  having  a  theory,  a  conviction,  a  consciousness  of  itself 
behind  it  —  of  being  the  expression  of  an  artistic  faith,  the  result 
of  choice  and  comparison.  I  do  not  say  it  was  necessarily  the 
worse  for  that :  it  would  take  much  more  courage  than  I  possess 
to  intimate  that  the  form  of  the  novel  as  Dickens  and  Thackeray 
(for  instance^  saw  it  had  any  taint  of  incompleteness.     It  was, 

237 


238  HENRY  JAMES 

however,  naif  (if  I  may  help  myself  out  with  another  French 
word) ;  and  evidently  if  it  be  destined  to  suffer  in  any  way  for 
having  lost  its  naivete  it  has  now  an  idea  of  making  sure  of  the 
corresponding  advantages.  During  the  period  I  have  alluded 
to  there  was  a  comfortable,  good-humoured  feeling  abroad  that 
a  novel  is  a  novel,  as  a  pudding  is  a  pudding,  and  that  our  only 
business  with  it  could  be  to  swallow  it.  But  within  a  year  or  two, 
for  some  reason  or  other,  there  have  been  signs  of  returning  ani- 
mation —  the  era  of  discussion  would  appear  to  have  been  to  a 
certain  extent  opened.  Art  lives  upon  discussion,  upon  experi- 
ment, upon  curiosity,  upon  variety  of  attempt,  upon  the  exchange 
of  views  and  the  comparison  of  standpoints;  and  there  is  a  pre- 
sumption that  those  times  when  no  one  has  anything  particular 
to  say  about  it,  and  has  no  reason  to  give  for  practice  or  preference, 
though  they  may  be  times  of  honour,  are  not  times  of  develop- 
ment —  are  times,  possibly  even,  a  little  of  dulness.  The  suc- 
cessful application  of  any  art  is  a  delightful  spectacle,  but  the 
theory  too  is  interesting;  and  though  there  is  a  great  deal  of  the 
latter  without  the  former  I  suspect  there  has  never  been  a  genuine 
success  that  has  not  had  a  latent  core  of  conviction.  Discussion, 
suggestion,  formulation,  these  things  are  fertilizing  when  they 
are  frank  and  sincere.  Mr.  Besant  has  set  an  excellent  example 
in  saying  what  he  thinks,  for  his  part,  about  the  way  in  which 
fiction  should  be  written,  as  well  as  about  the  way  in  which  it 
should  be  published;  for  his  view  of  the  "art,"  carried  on  into 
an  appendix,  covers  that  too.  Other  labourers  in  the  same  field 
will  doubtless  take  up  the  argument,  they  will  give  it  the  light 
of  their  experience,  and  the  effect  will  surely  be  to  make  our  interest 
in  the  novel  a  little  more  what  it  had  for  some  time  threatened 
to  fail  to  be  —  a  serious,  active,  inquiring  interest,  under  protec- 
tion of  which  this  delightful  study  may,  in  moments  of  confidence, 
venture  to  say  a  little  more  what  it  thinks  of  itself. 

It  must  take  itself  seriously  for  the  public  to  take  it  so.  The 
old  superstition  about  fiction  being  "wicked"  has  doubtless  died 
out  in  England;  but  the  spirit  of  it  lingers  in  a  certain  oblique 
regard  directed  toward  any  story  which  does  not  more  or  less 
admit  that  it  is  only  a  joke.  Even  the  most  jocular  novel  feels 
in  some  degree  the  weight  of  the  proscription  that  was  formerly 
directed  against  literary  levity:  the  jocularity  does  not  always 
succeed  in  passing  for  orthodoxy.  It  is  still  expected,  though 
perhaps  people  are  ashamed  to  say  it,  that  a  production  which 


THE  ART  OF  FICTION  239 

is  after  all  only  a  "make-believe"  (for  what  else  is  a  "story?") 
shall  be  in  some  degree  apologetic  —  shall  renounce  the  preten- 
sion of  attempting  really  to  represent  life.  This,  of  course,  any 
sensible,  wide-awake  story  declines  to  do,  for  it  quickly  perceives 
that  the  tolerance  granted  to  it  on  such  a  condition  is  only  an 
attempt  to  stifle  it  disguised  in  the  form  of  generosity.  The  old 
evangelical  hostility  to  the  novel,  which  was  as  explicit  as  it  was 
narrow,  and  which  regarded  it  as  little  less  favourable  to  our 
immortal  part  than  a  stage-play,  was  in  reality  far  less  insulting. 
The  only  reason  for  the  existence  of  a  novel  is  that  it  does  attempt 
to  represent  life.  When  it  relinquishes  this  attempt,  the  same 
attempt  that  we  see  on  the  canvas  of  the  painter,  it  will  have 
arrived  at  a  very  strange  pass.  It  is  not  expected  of  the  picture 
that  it  will  make  itself  humble  in  order  to  be  forgiven;  and  the 
analogy  between  the  art  of  the  painter  and  the  art  of  the  novelist 
is,  so  far  as  I  am  able  to  see,  complete.  Their  inspiration  is  the 
same,  their  process  (allowing  for  the  different  quality  of  the 
vehicle),  is  the  same,  their  success  is  the  same.  They  may  learn 
from  each  other,  they  may  explain  and  sustain  each  other.  Their 
cause  is  the  same,  and  the  honour  of  one  is  the  honour  of  another. 
The  Mahometans  think  a  picture  an  unholy  thing,  but  it  is  a 
long  time  since  any  Christian  did,  and  it  is  therefore  the  more 
odd  that  in  the  Christian  mind  the  traces  (dissimulated  though 
they  may  be)  of  a  suspicion  of  the  sister  art  should  linger  to  this 
day.  The  only  effectual  way  to  lay  it  to  rest  is  to  emphasize  the 
analogy  to  which  I  just  alluded  —  to  insist  on  the  fact  that  as  the 
picture  is  reality,  so  the  novel  is  history.  That  is  the  only  general 
description  (which  does  it  justice)  that  we  may  give  of  the  novel. 
But  history  also  is  allowed  to  represent  life ;  it  is  not,  any  more  than 
painting,  expected  to  apologize.  The  subject-matter  of  fiction 
is  stored  up  likewise  in  documents  and  records,  and  if  it  will  not 
give  itself  away,  as  they  say  in  California,  it  must  speak  with 
assurance,  with  the  tone  of  the  historian.  Certain  accomplished 
novelists  have  a  habit  of  giving  themselves  away  which  must  often 
bring  tears  to  the  eyes  of  people  who  take  their  fiction  seriously. 
I  was  lately  struck,  in  reading  over  many  pages  of  Anthony  Trol- 
lope,  with  his  want  of  discretion  in  this  particular.  In  a  digres- 
sion, a  parenthesis  or  an  aside,  he  concedes  to  the  reader  that  he 
and  this  trusting  friend  are  only  "making  believe."  He  admits 
that  the  events  he  narrates  have  not  really  happened,  and  that  he 
can  give  his  narrative  any  turn  the  reader  may  like  best.     Such 


240  HENRY  JAMES. 

a  betrayal  of  a  sacred  office  seems  to  me,  I  confess,  a  terrible 
crime;  it  is  what  I  mean  by  the  attitude  of  apology,  and  it  shocks 
me  every  whit  as  much  in  TroUope  as  it  would  have  shocked  me 
in  Gibbon  or  Macaulay.  It  implies  that  the  novelist  is  less  occu- 
pied in  looking  for  the  truth  (the  truth,  of  course  I  mean,  that  he 
assumes,  the  premises  that  we  must  grant  him,  whatever  they 
may  be),  than  the  historian,  and  in  doing  so  it  deprives  him  at  a 
stroke  of  all  his  standing-room.  To  represent  and  illustrate  the 
past,  the  actions  of  men,  is  the  task  of  either  writer,  and  the  only 
difference  that  I  can  see  is,  in  proportion  as  he  succeeds,  to  the 
honour  of  the  novelist,  consisting  as  it  does  in  his  having  more 
difficulty  in  collecting  his  evidence,  which  is  so  far  from  being 
purely  literary.  It  seems  to  me  to  give  him  a  great  character, 
the  fact  that  he  has  at  once  so  much  in  common  with  the  philoso- 
pher and  the  painter ;  this  double  analogy  is  a  magnificent  heritage. 
It  is  of  all  this  evidently  that  Mr.  Besant  is  full  when  he  insists 
upon  the  fact  that  fiction  is  one  of  the  fine  arts,  deserving  in  its  turn 
of  all  the  honours  and  emoluments  that  have  hitherto  been  reserved 
for  the  successful  profession  of  music,  poetry,  painting,  architec- 
ture. It  is  impossible  to  insist  too  much  on  so  important  a  truth, 
and  the  place  that  Mr.  Besant  demands  for  the  work  of  the  novel- 
ist may  be  represented,  a  trifle  less  abstractly,  by  saying  that  he 
demands  not  only  that  it  shall  be  reputed  artistic,  but  that  it  shall 
be  reputed  very  artistic  indeed.  It  is  excellent  that  he  should  have 
struck  this  note,  for  his  doing  so  indicates  that  there  was  need  of  it, 
that  his  proposition  may  be  to  many  people  a  novelty.  One  rubs 
one's  eyes  at  the  thought ;  but  the  rest  of  Mr.  Besant's  essay  con- 
firms the  revelation.  I  suspect  in  truth  that  it  would  be  possible 
to  confirm  it  still  further,  and  that  one  would  not  be  far  wrong  in 
saying  that  in  addition  to  the  people  to  whom  it  has  never  occurred 
that  a  novel  ought  to  be  artistic,  there  are  a  great  many  others  who, 
if  this  principle  were  urged  upon  them,  would  be  filled  with  an 
indefinable  mistrust.  They  would  find  it  difficult  to  ex[)lain  their 
repugnance,  but  it  would  operate  strongly  to  put  them  on  their 
guard.  "Art,"  in  our  Protestant  communities,  where  so  many 
things  have  got  so  strangely  twisted  about,  is  supposed  in  certain 
circles  to  have  some  vaguely  injurious  effect  upon  those  who  make 
it  an  important  consideration,  who  let  it  weigh  in  the  balance.  It 
is  assumed  to  be  opposed  in  some  mysterious  manner  to  morality, 
to  amusement,  to  instruction.  When  it  is  embodied  in  the  work 
of  the  painter  (the  sculptor  is  another  affair  !)  you  know  what  it  is: 


THE  ART   OF  FICTION  24I 

it  stands  there  before  you,  in  tlie  honesty  of  pink  and  green  and  a 
gilt  frame ;  you  can  see  the  worst  of  it  at  a  glance,  and  you  can  be 
on  your  guard.  But  when  it  is  introduced  into  literature  it  becomes 
more  insidious  —  there  is  danger  of  its  hurting  you  before  you  know 
it.  Literature  should  be  either  instructive  or  amusing,  and  there 
is  in  many  minds  an  impression  that  these  artistic  preoccupations, 
the  search  for  form,  contribute  to  neither  end,  interfere  indeed  with 
both.  They  are  too  frivolous  to  be  edifying,  and  too  serious  to  be 
diveirting;  and  they  are  moreover  priggish  and  paradoxical  and 
superfluous.  That,  I  think,  represents  the  manner  in  which  the 
latent  thought  of  many  people  who  read  novels  as  an  exercise  in 
skipping  w^ould  explain  itself  if  it  were  to  become  articulate.  They 
would  argue,  of  course,  that  a  novel  ought  to  be  "good,"  but  they 
would  interpret  this  term  in  a  fashion  of  their  own,  which  indeed 
would  vary  considerably  from  one  critic  to  another.  One  would 
say  that  being  good  means  representing  virtuous  and  aspiring  char- 
acters, placed  in  prominent  positions;  another  would  say  that  it 
depends  on  a  "happy  ending,"  on  a  distribution  at  the  last  of  prizes, 
pensions,  husbands,  wives,  babies,  millions,  appended  paragraphs, 
and  cheerful  remarks.  Another  still  would  say  that  it  means  being 
full  of  incident  and  movement,  so  that  we  shall  wish  to  jump  ahead, 
to  see  who  was  the  mysterious  stranger,  and  if  the  stolen  will  was 
ever  found,  and  shall  not  be  distracted  from  this  pleasure  by  any 
tiresome  analysis  or  "description."  But  they  would  all  agree  that 
the  "artistic"  idea  would  spoil  some  of  their  fun.  One  would 
hold  it  accountable  for  all  the  description,  another  would  see  it 
revealed  in  the  absence  of  sympathy.  Its  hostility  to  a  happy 
ending  would  be  evident,  and  it  might  even  in  some  cases  render 
any  ending  at  all  impossible.  The  "ending"  of  a  novel  is,  for 
many  persons,  like  that  of  a  good  dinner,  a  course  of  dessert  and 
ices,  and  the  artist  in  fiction  is  regarded  as  a  sort  of  meddlesome 
doctor  who  forbids  agreeable  aftertastes.  It  is  therefore  true  that 
this  conception  of  Mr.  Besant's  of  the  novel  as  a  superior  form  en- 
counters not  only  a  negative  but  a  positive  indifference.  It  matters 
little  that  as  a  work  of  art  it  should  really  be  as  little  or  as  much  of 
its  essence  to  supply  happy  endings,  sympathetic  characters,  and 
an  objective  tone,  as  if  it  were  a  work  of  mechanics :  the  associa- 
tion of  ideas,  however  incongruous,  might  easily  be  too  much  for  it 
if  an  eloquent  voice  were  not  sometimes  raised  to  call  attention  to 
the  fact  that  it  is  at  once  as  free  and  as  serious  a  branch  of  litera- 
ture as  any  other. 

R 


242  HENRY  JAMES 

Certainly  this  might  sometimes  be  doubted  in  presence  of  the 
enormous  number  of  works  of  fiction  that  appeal  to  the  credulity 
of  our  generation,  for  it  might  easily  seem  that  there  could  be  no 
great  character  in  a  commodity  so  quickly  and  easily  produced. 
It  must  be  admitted  that  good  novels  are  much  compromised  by 
bad  ones,  and  that  the  field  at  large  suffers  discredit  from  over- 
crowding. I  think,  however,  that  this  injury  is  only  superficial, 
and  that  the  superabundance  of  written  fiction  proves  nothing 
against  the  principle  itself.  It  has  been  vulgarized,  like  all  other 
kinds  of  literature,  like  everything  else  to-day,  and  it  has  proved 
more  than  some  kinds  accessible  to  vulgarization.  But  there  is  as 
much  difference  as  there  ever  was  between  a  good  novel  and  a  bad 
one:  the  bad  is  swept  with  all  the  daubed  canvases  and  spoiled 
marble  into  some  unvisited  limbo,  or  infinite  rubbish-yard  beneath 
the  back-windows  of  the  world,  and  the  good  subsists  and  emits 
its  light  and  stimulates  our  desire  for  perfection.  As  I  shall  take 
the  liberty  of  making  but  a  single  criticism  of  Mr.  Besant,  whose 
tone  is  so  full  of  the  love  of  his  art,  I  may  as  well  have  done  with  it 
at  once.  He  seems  to  me  to  mistake  in  attempting  to  say  so  defi- 
nitely beforehand  what  sort  of  an  .affair  the  good  novel  will  be. 
To  indicate  the  danger  of  such  an  error  as  that  has  been  the  purpose 
of  these  few  pages;  to  suggest  that  certain  traditions  on  the  sub- 
ject, applied  a  priori,  have  already  had  much  to  answer  for,  and 
that  the  good  health  of  an  art  which  undertakes  so  immediately 
to  reproduce  life  must  demand  that  it  be  perfectly  free.  It  lives 
upon  exercise,  and  the  very  meaning  of  exercise  is  freedom.  The 
only  obligation  to  which  in  advance  we  may  hold  a  novel,  without 
incurring  the  accusation  of  being  arbitrary,  is  that  it  be  interesting. 
That  general  responsibility  rests  upon  it,  but  it  is  the  only  one  I 
can  think  of.  The  ways  in  which  it  is  at  liberty  to  accomplish  this 
result  (of  interesting  us)  strike  me  as  innumerable,  and  such  as 
can  only  suffer  from  being  marked  out  or  fenced  in  by  prescription. 
They  are  as  various  as  the  temperament  of  man,  and  they  are  suc- 
cessful in  proportion  as  they  reveal  a  particular  mind,  different 
from  others.  A  novel  is  in  its  broadest  definition  a  personal,  a 
direct  impression  of  life :  that,  to  begin  with,  constitutes  its  value, 
which  is  greater  or  less  according  to  the  intensity  of  the  impression. 
But  there  will  be  no  intensity  at  all,  and  therefore  no  value,  unless 
there  is  freedom  to  feel  and  say.  The  tracing  of  a  line  to  be  fol- 
lowed, of  a  tone  to  be  taken,  of  a  form  to  be  filled  out,  is  a  limitation 
of  that  freedom  and  a  suppression  of  the  very  thing  that  we  are  most 


THE  ART  OF  FICTION  243 

curious  about.  The  form,  it  seems  to  me,  is  to  be  appreciated 
after  the  fact :  then  the  author's  choice  has  been  made,  his  stand- 
ard has  been  indicated;  then  we  can  follow  lines  and  directions 
and  compare  tones  and  resemblances.  Then  in  a  word  we  can  en- 
joy one  of  the  most  charming  of  pleasures,  we  can  estimate  quality, 
we  can  apply  the  test  of  execution.  The  execution  belongs  to  the 
author  alone;  it  is  what  is  most  personal  to  him,  and  we  measure 
him  by  that.  The  advantage,  the  luxury,  as  well  as  the  torment 
and  responsibility  of  the  novelist,  is  that  there  is  no  limit  to  what 
he  may  attempt  as  an  executant  —  no  limit  to  his  possible  experi- 
ments, efforts,  discoveries,  successes.  Here  it  is  especially  that 
he  works,  step  by  step,  like  his  brother  of  the  brush,  of  whom  we 
may  always  say  that  he  has  painted  his  picture  in  a  manner  best 
known  to  himself.  His  manner  is  his  secret,  not  necessarily  a 
jealous  one.  He  cannot  disclose  it  as  a  general  thing  if  he  would; 
he  would  be  at  a  loss  to  teach  it  to  others.  I  say  this  with  a  due 
recollection  of  having  insisted  on  the  community  of  method  of  the 
artist  who  paints  a  picture  and  the  artist  who  writes  a  novel.  The 
painter  is  able  to  teach  the  rudiments  of  his  practice,  and  it  is 
possible,  from  the  study  of  good  work  (granted  the  aptitude),  both 
to  learn  how  to  paint  and  to  learn  how  to  write.  Yet  it  remains 
true,  without  injury  to  the  rapprochement,  that  the  literary  artist 
would  be  obliged  to  say  to  his  pupil  much  more  than  the  other, 
"Ah,  well,  you  must  do  it  as  you  can  ! "  It  is  a  question  of  degree, 
a  matter  of  delicacy.  If  there  are  exact  sciences,  there  are  also 
exact  arts,  and  the  grammar  of  painting  is  so  much  more  definite 
that  it  makes  the  difference. 

I  ought  to  add,  however,  that  if  Mr.  Besant  says  at  the  beginning 
of  his  essay  that  the  "laws  of  fiction  may  be  laid  down  and  taught 
with  as  much  precision  and  exactness  as  the  laws  of  harmony, 
perspective,  and  proportion,"  he  mitigates  what  might  appear  to 
be  an  extravagance  by  applying  his  remark  to  "general"  laws,  and 
by  expressing  most  of  these  rules  in  a  manner  with  which  it  would 
certainly  be  unaccommodating  to  disagree.  That  the  novelist 
must  write  from  his  experience,  that  his  "characters  must  be  real 
and  such  as  might  be  met  with  in  actual  life;"  that  "a  young 
lady  brought  up  in  a  quiet  country  village  should  avoid  descrip- 
tions of  garrison  life,"  and  "a  writer  whose  friends  and  personal 
experiences  belong  to  the  lower  middle-class  should  carefully  avoid 
introducing  his  characters  into  society;"  that  one  should  enter 
one's  notes  in  a  common-place  book;  that  one's  figures  should  be 


244  HENRY  JAMES 

clear  in  outline;   that  making  them  clear  by  some  trick  of  speech 
or  of  carriage  is  a  bad  method,  and  "describing  them  at  length" 
is  a  worse  one;    that  English  Fiction  should  have  a  "conscious 
moral  purpose;"    that  "it  is  almost  impossible  to  estimate  too 
highly  the  value  of  careful  workmanship  —  that   is,   of  style;" 
that  "the  most  important  point  of  all  is  the  story,"  that  "the  story 
is  everything" :  these  are  principles  with  most  of  which  it  is  surely 
impossible  not  to  sympathize.     That  remark  about  the  lower  mid- 
dle-class writer  and  his  knowing  his  place  is  perhaps  rather  chilling ; 
but  for  the  rest  I  should  find  it  difficult  to  dissent  from  any  one  of 
these  recommendations.     At  the  same  time,  I  should  find  it  difficult 
positively  to  assent  to  them,  with  the  exception,  perhaps,  of  the 
injunction  as  to  entering  one's  notes  in  a  common-place  book. 
They  scarcely  seem  to  me  to  have  the  quality  that  Mr.  Besant  at- 
tributes to  the  rules  of  the  novelist  —  the  ' '  precision  and  exactness  " 
of  "the  laws  of  harmony,  perspective,  and  proportion."     They 
are  suggestive,  they  are  even  inspiring,  but  they  are  not  exact, 
though  they  are  doubtless  as  much  so  as  the  case  admits  of:  which 
is  a  proof  of  that  liberty  of  interpretation  for  which  I  just  contended. 
For  the  value  of  these  different  injunctions  —  so  beautiful  and  so 
vague  —  is  wholly  in  the  meaning  one  attaches  to  them.     The 
characters,  the  situation,  which  strike  one  as  real  will  be  those  that 
touch  and  interest  one  most,  but  the  measure  of  reality  is  very 
difficult  to  fix.     The  reality  of  Don  Quixote  or  of  Mr.  Micawber 
is  a  very  delicate  shade;  it  is  a  reality  so  coloured  by  the  author's 
vision  that,  vivid  as  it  may  be,  one  would  hesitate  to  propose  it  as 
a  model:   one  would  expose  one's  self  to  some  very  embarrassing 
questions  on  the  part  of  a  pupil.     It  goes  without  saying  that  you 
will  not  write  a  good  novel  unless  you  possess  the  sense  of  reality; 
but  it  will  be  difficult  to  give  you  a  recipe  for  calling  that  sense 
into  being.     Humanity  is   immense,   and  reality  has  a  myriad 
forms;   the  most  one  can  affirm  is  that  some  of  the  flowers  of  fic- 
tion have  the  odour  of  it,  and  others  have  not;  as  for  telling  you  in 
advance  how  your  nosegay  should  be  composed,  that  is  another 
affair.     It  is  equally  excellent  and  inconclusive  to  say  that  one 
must  write  from  experience;   to  our  supposititious  aspirant  such  a 
declaration  might  savour  of  mockery.     What  kind  of  experience 
is  intended,  and  where  does  it  begin  and  end?     Experience  is 
never  limited,  and  it  is  never  complete;  it  is  an  immense  sensibility, 
a  kind  of  huge  spider-web  of  the  finest  silken  threads  suspended  in 
the  chamber  of  consciousness,  and  catching  every  air-borne  particle 


THE  ART   OF  FICTION  245 

in  its  tissue.  It  is  the  very  atmosphere  of  the  mind ;  and  when  the 
mind  is  imaginative  —  much  more  when  it  happens  to  be  that  of  a 
man  of  genius  —  it  takes  to  itself  the  faintest  hints  of  hfe,  it  con- 
verts the  very  pulses  of  the  air  into  revelations.  The  young  lady 
living  in  a  village  has  only  to  be  a  damsel  upon  whom  nothing  is 
lost  to  make  it  quite  unfair  (as  it  seems  to  me)  to  declare  to  her 
that  she  shall  have  nothing  to  say  about  the  military.  Greater 
miracles  have  been  seen  than  that,  imagination  assisting,  she  should 
speak  the  truth  about  some  of  these  gentlemen.  I  remember  an 
English  novelist,  a  woman  of  genius,  telling  me  that  she  was  much 
commended  for  the  impression  she  had  managed  to  give  in  one  of 
her  tales  of  the  nature  and  way  of  life  of  the  French  Protestant 
youth.  She  had  been  asked  where  she  learned  so  much  about 
this  recondite  being,  she  had  been  congratulated  on  her  peculiar 
opportunities.  These  opportunities  consisted  in  her  having  once, 
in  Paris,  as  she  ascended  a  staircase,  passed  an  open  door  where, 
in  the  household  of  a  pasteur,  some  of  the  young  Protestants  were 
seated  at  table  round  a  finished  meal.  The  glimpse  made  a  pic- 
ture; it  lasted  only  a  moment,  but  that  moment  was  experience. 
She  had  got  her  direct  personal  impression,  and  she  turned  out  her 
type.  She  knew  what  youth  was,  and  what  Protestantism;  she 
also  had  the  advantage  of  having  seen  what  it  was  to  be  French, 
so  that  she  converted  these  ideas  into  a  concrete  image  and  pro- 
duced a  reality.  xA.bove  all,  however,  she  was  blessed  with  the 
faculty  which  when  you  give  it  an  inch  takes  an  ell,  and  which  for 
the  artist  is  a  much  greater  source  of  strength  than  any  accident  of 
residence  or  of  place  in  the  social  scale.  The  power  to  guess  th(^ 
unseen  from  the  seen,  to  trace  the  implication  of  things,  to  judge 
the  whole  piece  by  the  pattern,  the  condition  of  feeling  life  in  gen- 
eral so  completely  that  you  are  well  on  your  way  to  knowing  any 
particular  corner  of  it  —  this  cluster  of  gifts  may  almost  be  said  to 
constitute  experience,  and  they  occur  in  country  and  in  town,  and 
in  the  most  differing  stages  of  education.  If  experience  consists  of 
impressions,  it  may  be  said  that  impressions  are  experience,  just 
as  (have  we  not  seen  it  ?)  they  are  the  very  air  we  breathe.  There- 
fore, if  I  should  certainly  say  to  a  novice,  "Write  from  experience 
and  experience  only,"  I  should  feel  that  this  was  rather  a  tantaliz- 
ing monition  if  I  were  not  careful  immediately  to  add,  "Try  to 
be  one  of  the  people  on  whom  nothing  is  lost ! " 

I  am  far  from  intending  by  this  to  minimize  the  importance  of 
exactness  —  of  truth  of  detail.     One  can  speak  best  from  one's 


246  HENRY  JAMES 

own  taste,  and  I  may  therefore  venture  to  say  that  the  air  of  reality 
(soHdity  of  specification)  seems  to  me  to  be  the  supreme  virtue  of 
a  novel  —  the  merit  on  which  all  its  other  merits  (including  that 
conscious  moral  purpose  of  which  Mr.  Besant  speaks)  helplessly 
and  submissively  depend.  If  it  be  not  there  they  are  all  as  noth- 
ing, and  if  these  be  there,  they  owe  their  effect  to  the  success  with 
which  the  author  has  produced  the  illusion  of  life.  The  cultiva- 
tion of  this  success,  the  study  of  this  exquisite  process,  form,  to 
my  taste,  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  the  art  of  the  novelist.  They 
are  his  inspiration,  his  despair,  his  reward,  his  torment,  his  delight. 
It  is  here  in  very  truth  that  he  competes  with  life ;  it  is  here  that  he 
competes  with  his  brother  the  painter  in  his  attempt  to  render  the 
look  of  things,  the  look  that  conveys  their  meaning,  to  catch  the 
colour,  the  relief,  the  expression,  the  surface,  the  substance  of  the 
human  spectacle.  It  is  in  regard  to  this  that  Mr.  Besant  is  well 
inspired  when  he  bids  him  take  notes.  He  cannot  possiblv  take 
too  many,  he  cannot  possibly  take  enough.  All  life  solicits  him, 
and  to  "render"  the  simplest  surface,  to  produce  the  most  momen- 
tary illusion,  is  a  very  complicated  business.  His  case  would  be 
easier,  and  the  rule  would  be  more  exact,  if  Mr.  Besant  had  been 
able  to  tell  him  what  notes  to  take.  But  this,  I  fear,  he  can  never 
learn  in  any  manual ;  it  is  the  business  of  his  life.  He  has  to  take 
a  great  many  in  order  to  select  a  few,  he  has  to  work  them  up  as  he 
can,  and  even  the  guides  and  philosophers  who  might  have  most 
to  say  to  him  must  leave  him  alone  when  it  comes  to  the  applica- 
tion of  precepts,  as  we  leave  the  painter  in  communion  with  his 
palette.  That  his  characters  "must  be  clear  in  outline,"  as  Mr. 
Besant  says  —  he  feels  that  down  to  his  boots ;  but  how  he  shall 
make  them  so  is  a  secret  between  his  good  angel  and  himself.  It 
would  be  absurdly  simple  if  he  could  be  taught  that  a  great  deal 
of  "description"  would  make  them  so,  or  that  on  (he  contrary  the 
absence  of  description  and  the  cultivation  of  dialogue,  or  the 
absence  of  dialogue  and  the  multiplication  of  "incident,"  would 
rescue  him  from  his  difficulties.  Nothing,  for  instance,  is  more  pos- 
sible than  that  he  be  of  a  turn  of  mind  for  which  this  odd,  literal 
opposition  of  description  and  dialogue,  incident  and  description, 
has  little  meaning  and  light.  People  often  talk  of  these  things  as 
if  they  had  a  kind  of  internecine  distinctness,  instead  of  melting 
into  each  other  at  every  breath,  and  being  intimately  associated 
parts  of  one  general  effort  of  e.xpression.  I  cannot  imagine  com- 
position existing  in  a  series  of  blocks,  nor  conceive,  in  any  novel 


THE  ART  OF  FICTION  247 

worth  discussing  at  all,  of  a  passage  of  description  that  is  not  in 
its  intention  narrative,  a  passage  of  dialogue  that  is  not  in  its 
intention  descriptive,  a  touch  of  truth  of  any  sort  that  does  not  par- 
take of  the  nature  of  incident,  or  an  incident  that  derives  its  interest 
from  any  other  source  than  the  general  and  only  source  of  the  suc- 
cess of  a  work  of  art  —  that  of  being  illustrative.  A  novel  is  a 
living  thing,  all  one  and  continuous,  like  any  other  organism,  and  in 
proportion  as  it  lives  will  it  be  found,  I  think,  that  in  each  of  the 
parts  there  is  something  of  each  of  the  other  parts.  The  critic 
who  over  the  close  texture  of  a  finished  work  shall  pretend  to  trace 
a  geography  of  items  will  mark  some  frontiers  as  artificial,  I  fear, 
as  any  that  have  been  known  to  history.  There  is  an  old-fashioned 
distinction  between  the  novel  of  character  and  the  novel  of  incident 
which  must  have  cost  many  a  smile  to  the  intending  fabulist  who 
was  keen  about  his  work.  It  appears  to  me  as  little  to  the  point  as 
the  equally  celebrated  distinction  between  the  novel  and  the  ro- 
mance —  to  answer  as  little  to  any  reality.  There  are  bad  novels 
and  good  novels,  as  there  are  bad  pictures  and  good  pictures ;  but 
that  is  the  only  distinction  in  which  I  see  any  meaning,  and  I  can 
as  little  imagine  speaking  of  a  novel  of  character  as  I  can 
imagine  speaking  of  a  picture  of  character.  When  one  says 
picture  one  says  of  character,  when  one  says  novel  one  says  of  inci- 
dent, and  the  terms  may  be  transposed  at  will.  What  is  character 
but  the  determination  of  incident  ?  What  is  incident  but  the 
illustration  of  character  ?  What  is  either  a  picture  or  a  novel  that 
is  not  of  character?  What  else  do  we  seek  in  it  and  find  in  it? 
It  is  an  incident  for  a  woman  to  stand  up  with  her  hand  resting  on 
a  table  and  look  out  at  you  in  a  certain  way;  or  if  it  be  not  an 
incident  I  think  it  will  be  hard  to  sav  what  it  is.  At  the  same  time 
it  is  an  expression  of  character.  If  you  say  you  don't  see  it  (char- 
acter in  that  —  aUons  done  !),  this  is  exactly  what  the  artist  who  has 
reasons  of  his  own  for  thinking  he  does  see  it  undertakes  to  show 
you.  When  a  young  man  makes  up  his  mind  that  he  has  not  faith 
enough  after  all  to  enter  the  church  as  he  intended,  that  is  an  inci- 
dent, though  you  may  not  hurry  to  the  end  of  the  chapter  to  see 
whether  perhaps  he  doesn't  change  once  more.  I  do  not  say  that 
these  are  extraordinary  or  starthng  incidents.  I  do  not  pretend  to 
estimate  the  degree  of  interest  proceeding  from  them,  for  this  will 
depend  upon  the  skill  of  the  painter.  It  sounds  almost  puerile  to 
say  that  some  incidents  are  intrinsically  much  more  important  than 
others,  and  I  need  not  take  this  precaution  after  having  professed 


248  HENRY  JAMES 

my  sympathy  for  the  major  ones  in  remarking  that  the  only  classi- 
fication of  the  novel  that  I  can  understand  is  into  that  which  has 
life  and  that  which  has  it  not. 

The  novel  and  the  romance,  the  novel  of  incident  and  that  of 
character  —  these  clumsy  separations  appear  to  me  to  have  been 
made  by  critics  and  readers  for  their  own  convenience,  and  to  help 
them  out  of  some  of  their  occasional  queer  predicaments,  but  to 
have  little  reality  or  interest  for  the  producer,  from  whose  point 
of  view  it  is  of  course  that  we  are  attempting  to  consider  the  art  of 
fiction.  The  case  is  the  same  with  another  shadowy  category 
which  Mr.  Besant  apparently  is  disposed  to  set  up  —  that  of  the 
''modern  English  novel";  unless  indeed  it  be  that  in  this  matter 
he  has  fallen  into  an  accidental  confusion  of  standpoints.  It  is 
not  quite  clear  whether  he  intends  the  remarks  in  which  he  alludes 
to  it  to  be  didactic  or  historical.  It  is  as  difficult  to  suppose  a  per- 
son intending  to  write  a  modern  English  as  to  suppose  him  writing 
an  ancient  English  novel :  that  is  a  label  which  begs  the  question. 
One  writes  the  novel,  one  paints  the  picture,  of  one's  language  and 
of  one's  time,  and  calhng  it  modern  English  v/ill  not,  alas !  make 
the  difficult  task  any  easier.  No  more,  unfortunately,  will  calling 
this  or  that  work  of  one's  fellow-artist  a  romance  — ■  unless  it  be, 
of  course,  simply  for  the  pleasantness  of  the  thing,  as  for  instance 
when  Hawthorne  gave  this  heading  to  his  story  of  Blithedale. 
The  French,  who  have  brought  the  theory  of  fiction  to  remarkable 
completeness,  have  but  one  name  for  the  novel,  and  have  not  at- 
tempted smaller  things  in  it,  that  I  can  see,  for  that.  I  can  think 
of  no  obligation  to  which  the  "romancer  "  would  not  be  held  equally 
with  the  novelist;  the  standard  of  execution  is  equally  high  for 
each.  Of  course  it  is  of  execution  that  we  are  talking  —  that 
being  the  only  point  of  a  novel  that  is  open  to  contention.  This  is 
perhaps  too  often  lost  sight  of,  only  to  produce  interminable 
confusions  and  cross-purposes.  We  must  grant  the  artist  his  sub- 
ject, his  idea,  his  donnee:  our  criticism  is  applied  only  to  what  he 
makes  of  it.  Naturally  I  do  not  mean  that  we  are  bound  to  like  it 
or  find  it  interesting:  in  case  we  do  not,  our  course  is  perfectly 
simple  —  to  let  it  alone.  We  may  believe  that  of  a  certain  idea 
even  the  most  sincere  novelist  can  make  nothing  at  all,  and  the 
event  may  perfectly  justify  our  belief;  but  the  failure  will  have 
been  a  failure  to  execute,  and  it  is  in  the  execution  that  the  fatal 
weakness  is  recorded.  If  we  pretend  to  respect  the  artist  at  all, 
we  must  allow  him  his  freedom  of  choice,  in  the  face,  in  particular 


THE  ART   OF  FICTION 


249 


cases,  of  innumerable  presumptions  that  the  choice  will  not  fruc- 
tify. Art  derives  a  considerable  part  of  its  beneficial  exercise  from 
flying  in  the  face  of  presumptions,  and  some  of  the  most  interesting 
experiments  of  which  it  is  capable  are  hidden  in  the  bosom  of  com- 
mon things.  Gustave  Flaubert  has  written  a  story  about  the  de- 
votion of  a  servant-girl  to  a  parrot,  and  the  production,  highly  fin- 
ished as  it  is,  cannot  on  the  whole  be  called  a  success.  We  are 
perfectly  free  to  find  it  flat,  but  I  think  it  might  have  been  in- 
teresting; and  I,  for  my  part,  am  extremely  glad  he  should  have 
written  it;  it  is  a  contribution  to  our  knowledge  of  what  can  be 
done  —  or  what  cannot.  Ivan  Turgenieff  has  written  a  tale  about 
a  deaf  and  dumb  serf  and  a  lap-dog,  and  the  thing  is  touching,  lov- 
ing, a  little  masterpiece.  He  struck  the  note  of  life  where  Gustave 
Flaubert  missed  it  —  he  flew  in  the  face  of  a  presumption  and 
achieved  a  victory. 

Nothing,  of  course,  will  ever  take  the  place  of  the  good  old  fashion 
of  "liking "  a  work  of  art  or  not  liking  it :  the  most  improved  criti- 
cism will  not  abolish  that  primitive,  that  ultimate  test.  I  mention 
this  to  guard  myself  from  the  accusation  of  intimating  that  the 
idea,  the  subject,  of  a  novel  or  a  picture,  does  not  matter.  It 
matters,  to  my  sense,  in  the  highest  degree,  and  if  I  might  put  up 
a  prayer  it  would  be  that  artists  should  select  none  but  the  richest. 
Some,  as  I  have  already  hastened  to  admit,  are  much  more  re- 
munerative than  others,  and  it  would  be  a  world  happily  arranged 
in  which  persons  intending  to  treat  them  should  be  exempt  frohi 
confusions  and  mistakes.  This  fortunate  condition  will  arrive 
only,  I  fear,  on  the  same  day  that  critics  become  purged  from  error. 
Meanwhile,  I  repeat,  we  do  not  judge  the  artist  with  fairness  unless 
we  say  to  him,  "Oh,  I  grant  you  your  starting-point,  because  if  I 
did  not  I  should  seem  to  prescribe  to  you,  and  heaven  forbid  I  should 
take  that  responsibility.  If  I  pretend  to  tell  you  what  you  must  not 
take,  you  will  call  upon  me  to  tell  you  then  what  you  must  take; 
in  which  case  I  shall  be  prettily  caught.  Moreover,  it  isn't  till  I 
have  accepted  your  data  that  I  can  begin  to  measure  you.  I  have 
the  standard,  the  pitch;  I  have  no  right  to  tamper  with  your  flute 
and  then  criticise  your  music.  Of  course  I  may  not  care  for  your 
idea  at  all ;  I  may  think  it  silly,  or  stale,  or  unclean ;  in  which  case 
I  wash  my  hands  of  you  altogether.  I  may  content  myself  with  be- 
lieving that  you  will  not  have  succeeded  in  being  interesting,  but  I 
shall,  of  course,  not  attempt  to  demonstrate  it,  and  you  will  be 
as  indifferent  to  me  as  I  am  to  you.     I  needn't  remind  you  that  there 


250  HENRY  JAMES 

are  all  sorts  of  tastes :  who  can  know  it  better  ?  Some  people,  for 
excellent  reasons,  don't  like  to  read  about  carpenters;  others, 
for  reasons  even  better,  don't  like  to  read  about  courtesans.  Many 
object  to  Americans.  Others  (I  believe  they  are  mainly  editors 
and  publishers)  won't  look  at  Italians.  Some  readers  don't  like 
quiet  subjects;  others  don't  like  bustling  ones.  Some  enjoy  a 
complete  illusion,  others  the  consciousness  of  large  concessions. 
They  choose  their  novels  accordingly,  and  if  they  don't  care  about 
your  idea  they  won't,  a  fortiori,  care  about  your  treatment." 

So  that  it  comes  back  very  quickly,  as  I  have  said,  to  the  liking: 
in  spite  of  M.  Zola,  who  reasons  less  powerfully  than  he  represents, 
.and  who  will  not  reconcile  himself  to  this  absoluteness  of  taste, 
thinking  that  there  are  certain  things  that  people  ought  to  like, 
and  that  they  can  be  made  to  like.  I  am  quite  at  a  loss  to  imagine 
anything  (at  any  rate  in  this  matter  of  fiction)  that  people  ought 
to  like  or  to  dislike.  Selection  will  be  sure  to  take  care  of  itself, 
for  it  has  a  constant  motive  behind  it.  That  motive  is  simply  ex- 
perience. As  people  feel  life,  so  they  will  feel  the  art  that  is  most 
closely  related  to  it.  This  closeness  of  relation  is  what  we  should 
never  forget  in  talking  of  the  effort  of  the  novel.  Many  people 
speak  of  it  as  a  factitious,  artificial  form,  a  product  of  ingenuity, 
the  business  of  which  is  to  alter  and  arrange  the  things  that  sur- 
round us,  to  translate  them  into  conventional,  traditional  moulds. 
This,  however,  is  a  view  of  the  matter  which  carries  us  but  a  very 
short  way,  condemns  the  art  to  an  eternal  repetition  of  a  few  fa- 
miliar cliches,^  cuts  short  its  development,  and  leads  us  straight 
up  to  a  dead  wall.  Catching  the  very  note  and  trick,  the  strange 
irregular  rhythm  of  life,  that  is  the  attempt  whose  strenuous  force 
keeps  Fiction  upon  her  feet.  In  proportion  as  in  what  she  offers 
us  we  see  life  without  rearrangement  do  we  feel  that  we  are  touch- 
ing the  truth ;  in  proportion  as  we  see  it  with  rearrangement  do  we 
feel  that  we  are  being  put  off  with  a  substitute,  a  compromise  and 
convention.  It  is  not  uncommon  to  hear  an  extraordinary  assur- 
ance of  remark  in  regard  to  this  matter  of  rearranging,  which  is 
often  spoken  of  as  if  it  were  the  last  word  of  art.  Mr.  Besant  seems 
to  me  in  danger  of  falling  into  the  great  error  with  his  rather  un- 
guarded talk  about  "selection."  Art  is  essentially  selection,  but 
it  is  a  selection  whose  main  care  is  to  be  typical,  to  be  inclusive. 
For  many  people  art  means  rose-coloured  window-panes,  and  selec- 
tion means  picking  a  bouquet  for  Mrs.  Grundy.     They  will  tell 

'  [Stereotype  plates;  negatives.] 


THE  ART  OF  FICTION  251 

you  glibly  that  artistic  considerations  have  nothing  to  do  with  the 
disagreeable,  with  the  ugly;  they  will  rattle  off  shallow  common- 
places about  the  province  of  art  and  the  limits  of  art  till  you  are 
moved  to  some  wonder  in  return  as  to  the  province  and  the  limits 
of  ignorance.  It  appears  to  me  that  no  one  can  ever  have  made  a 
seriously  artistic  attempt  without  becoming  conscious  of  an  im- 
mense increase  —  a  kind  of  revelation  —  of  freedom.  One  per- 
ceives in  that  case — by  the  light  of  a  heavenly  ray  —  that  the  prov- 
ince of  art  is  all  life,  all  feeling,  all  observation,  all  vision.  As  Mr. 
Besant  so  justly  intimates,  it  is  all  experience.  That  is  a  sufficient 
answer  to  those  who  maintain  that  it  must  not  touch  the  sad  things 
of  life,  who  stick  into  its  divine  unconscious  bosom  little  prohibi- 
tory inscriptions  on  the  end  of  sticks,  such  as  we  see  in  public  gar- 
dens—  "It  is  forbidden  to  walk  on  the  grass;  it  is  forbidden  to 
touch  the  flowers ;  it  is  not  allowed  to  introduce  dogs  or  to  remain 
after  dark;  it  is  requested  to  keep  to  the  right."  The  young  as- 
pirant in  the  line  of  fiction  whom  we  continue  to  imagine  will  do 
nothing  without  taste,  for  in  that  case  his  freedom  would  be  of 
little  use  to  him ;  but  the  first  advantage  of  his  taste  will  be  to  reveal 
to  him  the  absurdity  of  the  little  sticks  and  tickets.  If  he  have 
taste,  I  must  add,  of  course  he  will  have  ingenuity,  and  my  dis- 
respectful reference  to  that  quality  just  now  was  not  meant  to  imply 
that  it  is  useless  in  fiction.  But  it  is  only  a  secondary  aid ;  the  first 
is  a  capacity  for  receiving  straight  impressions. 

Mr.  Besant  has  some  remarks  on  the  question  of  "the  story" 
which  I  shall  not  attempt  to  criticise,  though  they  seem  to  me  to  con- 
tain a  singular  ambiguity,  because  I  do  not  think  I  understand  them. 
I  cannot  see  what  is  meant  by  talking  as  if  there  were  a  part  of  a 
novel  which  is  the  story  and  part  of  it  which  for  mystical  reasons 
is  not  —  unless  indeed  the  distinction  be  made  in  a  sense  in  which 
it  is  difficult  to  suppose  that  any  one  should  attempt  to  convey  any- 
thing. "The  story,"  if  it  represents  anything,  represents  the  sub- 
ject, the  idea,  the  donnee  of  the  novel;  and  there  is  surely  no 
"school"  —  Mr.  Besant  speaks  of  a  school  —  which  urges  that 
a  novel  should  be  all  treatment  and  no  subject.  There  must 
assuredly  be  something  to  treat;  every  school  is  intimately  con- 
scious of  that.  This  sense  of  the  story  being  the  idea,  the  starting- 
point,  of  the  novel,  is  the  only  one  that  I  see  in  which  it  can  be 
spoken  of  as  something  different  from  its  organic  whole;  and  since 
in  proportion  as  the  work  is  successful  the  idea  permeates  and  pene- 
trates it,  informs  and  animates  it,  so  that  every  word  and  every 


252  HENRY  JAMES 

punctuation-point  contribute  directly  to  the  expression,  in  that  pro- 
portion do  we  lose  our  sense  of  the  story  being  a  blade  which  may 
Ije  drawn  more  or  less  out  of  its  sheath.  The  story  and  the  novel, 
the  idea  and  the  form,  are  the  needle  and  thread,  and  I  never  heard 
of  a  guild  of  tailors  who  recommended  the  use  of  the  thread  with- 
out the  needle,  or  the  needle  without  the  thread.  Mr.  Besant  is 
not  the  only  critic  who  may  be  observed  to  have  spoken  as  if  there 
were  certain  things  in  life  which  constitute  stories,  and  certain 
others  which  do  not.  I  find  the  same  odd  implication  in  an  enter- 
taining article  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  devoted,  as  it  happens,  to 
Mr.  Besant's  lecture.  "The  story  is  the  thing  ! "  says  this  graceful 
writer,  as  if  with  a  tone  of  opposition  to  some  other  idea.  I  should 
think  it  was,  as  every  painter  who,  as  the  time  for  "sending  in" 
his  picture  looms  in  the  distance,  finds  himself  still  in  quest  of  a 
subject  —  as  every  belated  artist  not  fixed  about  his  theme  will 
heartily  agree.  There  are  some  subjects  which  speak  to  us  and 
others  which  do  not,  but  he  would  be  a  clever  man  who  should 
undertake  to  give  a  rule  —  an  index  expurgatorius  —  by  which 
the  story  and  the  no-story  should  be  known  apart.  It  is  impossible 
(to  me  at  least)  to  imagine  any  such  rule  which  shall  not  be  alto- 
gether arbitrary.  The  writer  in  the  Pall  Mall  opposes  the  delight- 
ful (as  I  suppose)  novel  of  Margot  la  Balafree  to  certain  tales  in 
which  "Bostonian  nymphs"  appear  to  have  "rejected  English 
dukes  for  psychological  reasons."  I  am  not  acquainted  with  the 
romance  just  designated,  and  can  scarcely  forgive  the  Pall  Mall 
critic  for  not  mentioning  the  name  of  the  author,  but  the  title 
appears  to  refer  to  a  lady  who  may  have  received  a  scar  in  some 
heroic  adventure.  I  am  inconsolable  at  not  being  acquainted 
with  this  episode,  but  am  utterly  at  a  loss  to  see  why  it  is  a  story 
when  the  rejection  (or  acceptance)  of  a  duke  is  not,  and  why  a 
reason,  psychological  or  other,  is  not  a  subject  when  a  cicatrix  is. 
They  are  all  particles  of  the  multitudinous  life  with  which  the  novel 
deals,  and  surely  no  dogma  which  pretends  to  make  it  kiwful  to  touch 
the  one  and  unlawful  to  touch  the  other  will  stand  for  a  moment  on 
its  feet.  It  is  the  special  picture  that  must  stand  or  fall,  according 
as  it  seem  to  possess  truth  or  to  lack  it.  Mr.  Besant  does  not, 
to  my  sense,  light  up  the  subject  by  intimating  that  a  story  must, 
under  penalty  of  not  being  a  story,  consist  of  "adventures."  Why 
of  adventures  more  than  of  green  spectacles  ?  He  mentions  a  cate- 
gory of  impossible  things,  and  among  them  he  places  "fiction  with- 
out  adventure."     Why   without   adventure,   more   than   without 


THE  ART  OF  FICTION  253 

matrimony,  or  celibacy,  or  parturition,  or  cholera,  or  hydropathy, 
or  Jansenism?  This  seems  to  me  to  bring  the  novel  back  to  the 
hapless  little  role  of  being  an  artificial,  ingenious  thing  —  bring  it 
down  from  its  large,  free  character  of  an  immense  and  exquisite 
correspondence  with  life.  And  what  is  adventure,  when  it  comes 
to  that,  and  by  what  sign  is  the  listening  pupil  to  recognize  it  ? 
It  is  an  adventure  —  an  immense  one  —  for  me  to  write  this 
little  article ;  and  for  a  Bostonian  nymph  to  reject  an  English  duke 
is  an  adventure  only  less  stirring,  I  should  say,  than  for  an  English 
duke  to  be  rejected  by  a  Bostonian  nymph.  I  see  dramas  within 
dramas  in  that,  and  innumerable  points  of  view.  A  psychological 
reason  is,  to  my  imagination,  an  object  adorably  pictorial ;  to  catch 
the  tint  of  its  complexion  —  I  feel  as  if  that  idea  might  inspire  one 
to  Titianesque  efforts.  There  are  few  things  more  exciting  to  me, 
in  short,  than  a  psychological  reason,  and  yet,  I  protest,  the  novel 
seems  to  me  the  most  magnificent  form  of  art.  I  have  just  been 
reading,  at  the  same  time,  the  delightful  story  of  Treasure  Island, 
by  Mr.  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  and,  in  a  manner  less  consecutive, 
the  last  tale  from  M.  Edmond  de  Goncourt,  which  is  entitled 
Cherie.  One  of  these  works  treats  of  murders,  mysteries,  islands 
of  dreadful  renown,  hairbreadth  escapes,  miraculous  coincidences 
and  buried  doubloons.  The  other  treats  of  a  little  French  girl  who 
lived  in  a  fine  house  in  Paris,  and  died  of  wounded  sensibility  be- 
cause no  one  would  marry  her.  I  call  Treasure  Island  delightful, 
because  it  appears  to  me  to  have  succeeded  wonderfully  in  what  it 
attempts ;  and  I  venture  to  bestow  no  epithet  upon  Cherie,  which 
strikes  me  as  having  failed  deplorably  in  what  it  attempts  —  that 
is  in  tracing  the  development  of  the  moral  consciousness  of  a  child. 
But  one  of  these  productions  strikes  me  as  exactly  as  much  of  a 
novel  as  the  other,  and  as  having  a  "story"  quite  as  much.  The 
moral  consciousness  of  a  child  is  as  much  a  part  of  life  as  the  islands 
of  the  Spanish  Main,  and  the  one  sort  of  geography  seems  to  me 
to  have  those  "surprises"  of  which  Mr.  Besant  speaks  quite  as 
much  as  the  other.  For  myself  (since  it  comes  back  in  the  last  re- 
sort, as  I  say,  to  the  preference  of  the  individual),  the  picture  of  the 
child's  experience  has  the  advantage  that  I  can  at  successive  steps 
(an  immense  luxury,  near  to  the  "sensual  pleasure"  of  which  Mr. 
Besant's  critic  in  the  Pall  Mall  speaks)  say  Yes  or  No,  as  it  may  be, 
to  what  the  artist  puts  before  me.  I  have  been  a  child  in  fact,  but 
I  have  been  on  a  quest  for  a  buried  treasure  only  in  supposition,  and 
it  is  a  simple  accident  that  with  M.  de  Goncourt  I  should  have  for 


254  HENRY  JAMES 

the  most  part  to  say  No.     With  George  Eliot,  when  she  painted 
that  country  with  a  far  other  inteUigence,  I  always  said  Yes. 

The  most  interesting  part  of  Mr.  Besant's  lecture  is  unfortunately 
the  briefest  passage  —  his  very  cursory  allusion  to  the  "conscious 
moral  purpose"  of  the  novel.  Here  again  it  is  not  very  clear 
whether  he  be  recording  a  fact  or  laying  down  a  principle;  it  is 
a  great  pity  that  in  the  latter  case  he  should  not  have  developed  his 
idea.  This  branch  of  the  subject  is  of  immense  importance,  and 
Mr.  Besant's  few  words  point  to  considerations  of  the  widest  reach, 
not  to  be  lightly  disposed  of.  He  will  have  treated  the  art  of 
fiction  but  superficially  who  is  not  prepared  to  go  every  inch  of  the 
way  that  these  considerations  will  carry  him.  It  is  for  this  reason 
that  at  the  beginning  of  these  remarks  I  was  careful  to  notify  the 
reader  that  my  reflections  on  so  large  a  theme  have  no  pretension 
to  be  exhaustive.  Like  Mr.  Besant,  I  have  left  the  question  of  the 
morality  of  the  novel  till  the  last,  and  at  the  last  I  find  I  have  used 
up  my  space.  It  is  a  question  surrounded  with  difficulties,  as  wit- 
ness the  very  first  that  meets  us,  in  the  form  of  a  definite  question, 
on  the  threshold.  Vagueness,  in  such  a  discussion,  is  fatal,  and 
what  is  the  meaning  of  your  morality  and  your  conscious  moral 
purpose?  Will  you  not  define  your  terms  and  explain  how  (a 
novel  being  a  picture)  a  picture  can  be  either  moral  or  immoral  ? 
You  wish  to  paint  a  moral  picture  or  carve  a  moral  statue :  will  you 
not  tell  us  how  you  would  set  about  it  ?  We  are  discussing  the  Art 
of  Fiction;  questions  of  art  are  questions  (in  the  widest  sense)  of 
execution ;  questions  of  morality  are  quite  another  affair,  and  will 
you  not  let  us  see  how  it  is  that  you  find  it  so  easy  to  mix  them  up  ? 
These  things  are  so  clear  to  Mr.  Besant  that  he  has  deduced  from 
them  a  law  which  he  sees  embodied  in  English  Fiction,  and  which 
is  "a  truly  admirable  thing  and  a  great  cause  for  congratulation." 
It  is  a  great  cause  for  congratulation  indeed  when  such  thorny  prob- 
lems become  as  smooth  as  silk.  I  may  add  that  in  so  far  as  Mr. 
Besant  i)erceives  that  in  point  of  fact  English  Fiction  has  addressed 
itself  preponderantly  to  these  delicate  questions  he  will  appear  to 
many  people  to  have  made  a  vain  discovery.  They  will  have  been 
positively  struck,  on  the  contrary,  with  the  moral  timidity  of  the 
usual  English  novelist ;  with  his  (or  with  her)  aversion  to  face  the 
difficulties  with  which  on  every  side  the  treatment  of  reality 
bristles.  He  is  apt  to  be  e.xtremely  shy  (whereas  the  picture  that 
Mr.  Besant  draws  is  a  picture  of  boldness),  and  the  sign  of  his 
work,  for  the  most  part,  is  a  cautious  silence  on  certain  subjects. 


THE  ART  OF  FICTION  255 

»In  the  English  novel  (by  which  of  course  I  mean  the  American  as 
well),  more  than  in  any  other,  there  is  a  traditional  difference  be- 
tween that  which  people  know  and  that  which  they  agree  to  admit 
that  they  know,  that  which  they  see  and  that  which  they  speak  of, 
that  which  they  feel  to  be  a  part  of  life  and  that  which  they  allow 
to  enter  into  literature.  There  is  the  great  difference,  in  short, 
between  what  they  talk  of  in  conversation  and  what  they  talk  of  in 
print.  The  essence  of  moral  energy  is  to  survey  the  whole  field, 
and  I  should  directly  reverse  Mr.  Besant's  remark  and  say  not  that 
the  English  novel  has  a  purpose,  but  that  it  has  a  difhdence.  To 
what  degree  a  purpose  in  a  work  of  art  is  a  source  of  corruption 
I  shall  not  attempt  to  inquire;  the  one  that  seems  to  me  least 
dangerous  is  the  purpose  of  making  a  perfect  work.  As  for  our 
novel,  I  may  say  lastly  on  this  score  that  as  we  find  it  in  England 
to-day  it  strikes  me  as  addressed  in  a  large  degree  to  "young  peo- 
ple," and  that  this  in  itself  constitutes  a  presumption  that  it  will  be 
rather  shy.  There  are  certain  things  which  it  is  generally  agreed 
not  to  discuss,  not  even  to  mention,  before  young  people.  That  is 
very  well,  but  the  absence  of  discussion  is  not  a  symptom  of  the 
moral  passion.  The  purpose  of  the  English  novel  —  "a  truly 
admirable  thing,  and  a  great  cause  for  congratulation  "  —  strikes 
me  therefore  as  rather  negative. 

There  is  one  point  at  which  the  moral  sense  and  the  artistic  sense 
lie  very  near  together ;  that  is  in  the  light  of  the  very  obvious  truth 
that  the  deepest  quality  of  a  work  of  art  will  always  be  the  quality 
of  the  mind  of  the  producer.  In  proportion  as  that  intelligence  is 
fine  will  the  novel,  the  picture,  the  statue  partake  of  the  substance 
of  beauty  and  truth.  To  be  constituted  of  such  elements  is,  to  my 
vision,  to  have  purpose  enough.  No  good  novel  will  ever  proceed 
from  a  superficial  mind;  that  seems  to  me  an  axiom  which,  for  the 
artist  in  fiction,  will  cover  all  needful  moral  ground :  if  the  youthful 
aspirant  take  it  to  heart  it  will  illuminate  for  him  many  of  the  mys- 
teries of  "purpose."  There  are  many  other  useful  things  that 
might  be  said  to  him,  but  I  have  come  to  the  end  of  my  article,  and 
can  only  touch  them  as  I  pass.  The  critic  in  the  Pall  Mall  Ga- 
zette, whom  I  have  already  quoted,  draws  attention  to  the  danger, 
in  speaking  of  the  art  of  fiction,  of  generalizing.  The  danger  that 
he  has  in  mind  is  rather,  I  imagine,  that  of  particularizing,  for 
there  are  some  comprehensive  remarks  which,  in  addition  to  those 
embodied  in  Mr.  Besant's  suggestive  lecture,  might  without  fear 
of  misleading  him  be  addressed  to  the  ingenuous  student.     I  should 


256  HENRY  JAMES 

remind  him  first  of  the  magnificence  of  the  form  that  is  open  to  him, 
which  offers  to  sight  so  few  restrictions  and  such  innumerable 
opportunities.  The  other  arts,  in  comparison,  appear  confined 
and  hampqred ;  the  various  conditions  under  which  they  are  exer- 
cised are  so  rigid  and  definite.  But  the  only  condition  that  I  can 
think  of  attaching  to  the  composition  of  the  novel  is,  as  I  have  al- 
ready said,  that  it  be  sincere.  This  freedom  is  a  splendid  privilege, 
and  the  first  lesson  of  the  young  novelist  is  to  learn  to  be  worthy  of  it. 
"Enjoy  it  as  it  deserves,"  I  should  say  to  him;  "take  possession- 
of  it,  explore  it  to  its  utmost  extent,  publish  it,  rejoice  in  it.  All 
life  belongs  to  you,  and  do  not  listen  either  to  those  who  would  shut 
you  up  into  corners  of  it  and  tell  you  that  it  is  only  here  and  there 
that  art  inhabits,  or  to  those  who  would  persuade  you  that  this 
heavenly  messenger  wings  her  way  outside  of  life  altogether, 
breathing  a  superfine  air,  and  turning  away  her  head  from  the 
truth  of  things.  There  is  no  impression  of  life,  no  manner  of  seeing 
it  and  feeling  it,  to  which  the  plan  of  the  novelist  may  not  offer 
a  place;  you  have  only  to  remember  that  talents  so  dissimilar  as 
those  of  Alexandre  Dumas  and  Jane  Austen,  Charles  Dickens  and 
Gustave  Flaubert  have  worked  in  this  field  with  equal  glory. 
Do  not  think  too  much  about  optimism  and  pessimism;  try  and 
catch  the  colour  of  life  itself.  In  France  to-day  we  see  a  prodigious 
effort  (that  of  Emile  Zola,  to  whose  solid  and  serious  work  no  ex- 
plorer of  the  capacity  of  the  novel  can  allude  without  respect),  we 
see  an  extraordinary  effort  vitiated  by  a  spirit  of  pessimism  on  a 
narrow  basis.  M.  Zola  is  magnificent,  but  he  strikes  an  English 
reader  as  ignorant;  he  has  an  air  of  working  in  the  dark;  if  he 
had  as  much  light  as  energy,  his  results  would  be  of  the  highest 
value.  As  for  the  aberrations  of  a  shallow  optimism,  the  ground 
(of  English  fiction  especially)  is  strewn  with  their  brittle  particles 
as  with  broken  glass.  If  you  must  indulge  in  conclusions,  let  them 
have  the  taste  of  a  wide  knowledge.  Remember  that  your  first 
duty  is  to  be  as  complete  as  possible  —  to  make  as  perfect  a  work. 
Be  generous  and  delicate  and  pursue  the  prize." 


XII 

EDGAR  ALLAN   POE 

(1809-1849) 

THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMPOSITION 

(1846) 

Charles  Dickens,  in  a  note  now  lying  before  me,  alluding 
to  an  examination  I  once  made  of  the  mechanism  of  Barnaby 
Rudge,  says  —  "By  the  way,  are  you  aware  that  Godwin  wrote 
his  Caleb  Williams  backwards?  He  first  involved  his  hero  in 
a  web  of  difficulties,  forming  the  second  volume,  and  then,  for 
the  first,  cast  about  him  for  some  mode  of  accounting  for  what 
had  been  done." 

I  cannot  think  this  the  precise  mode  of  procedure  on  the  part 
of  Godwin  —  and  indeed  what  he  himself  acknowledges  is  not 
altogether  in  accordance  with  Mr.  Dickens's  idea  —  but  the 
author  of  Caleb  Williams  was  too  good  an  artist  not  to  perceive 
the  advantage  derivable  from  at  least  a  somewhat  similar  process. 
Nothing  is  more  clear  than  that  every  plot,  worth  the  name, 
must  be  elaborated  to  its  denouetnent  before  anything  be  attempted 
with  the  pen.  It  is  only  with  the  denouement  constantly  in  view 
that  we  can  give  a  plot  its  indispensable  air  of  consequence,  or 
causation,  by  making  the  incidents,  and  especially  the  tone  at  all 
points,  tend  to  the  development  of  the  intention. 

There  is  a  radical  error,  I  think,  in  the  usual  mode  of  con- 
structing a  story.  Either  history  affords  a  thesis  —  or  one  is 
suggested  by  an  incident  of  the  day  —  or,  at  best,  the  author 
sets  himself  to  work  in  the  combination  of  striking  events  to  form 
merely  the  basis  of  his  narrative  —  designing,  generally,  to  fill 
in  with  description,  dialogue,  or  authorial  comment,  whatever 
s  257 


258  EDGAR  ALLAN   POE 

crevices  of  fact  or  action  may,  from  page  to  page,  render  them- 
selves apparent. 

I  prefer  commencing  with  the  consideration  of  an  effect.  Keep- 
ing originaHty  always  in  view  —  for  he  is  false  to  himself  who 
ventures  to  dispense  with  so  obvious  and  so  easily  attainable  a 
source  of  interest  —  I  say  to  myself,  in  the  first  place,  "Of  the 
innumerable  effects  or  impressions  of  which  the  heart,  the  intellect, 
or  (more  generally)  the  soul  is  susceptible,  what  one  shall  I,  on 
the  present  occasion,  select?"  Having  chosen  a  novel  first,  and 
secondly,  a  vivid  effect,  I  consider  whether  it  can  be  best  wrought 
by  incident  or  tone  —  whether  by  ordinary  incidents  and  peculiar 
tone,  or  the  converse,  or  by  peculiarity  both  of  incident  and  tone 

—  afterwards  looking  about  me  (or  rather  within)  for  such  com- 
binations of  event  or  tone  as  shall  best  aid  me  in  the  construction 
of  the  effect. 

I  have  often  thought  how  interesting  a  magazine  paper  might 
be  written  by  any  author  who  would  —  that  is  to  say,  who  could 

—  detail,  step  by  step,  the  processes  by  which  any  one  of  his  com- 
positions attained  its  ultimate  point  of  completion.  Why  such 
a  paper  has  never  been  given  to  the  world  I  am  much  at  a  loss  to 
say  —  but  perhaps  the  authorial  vanity  has  had  more  to  do  with 
the  omission  than  any  one  other  cause.  Most  writers  —  poets 
in  especial  —  prefer  having  it  understood  that  they  compose 
by  a  species  of  fine  frenzy  —  an  ecstatic  intuition  —  and  would 
positively  shudder  at  letting  the  public  take  a  peep  behind  the 
scenes,  at  the  elaborate  and  vacillating  crudities  of  thought  —  at 
the  true  purposes  seized  only  at  the  last  moment  —  at  the  innu- 
merable glimpses  of  idea  that  arrived  not  at  the  maturity  of  full 
view  —  at  the  fully-matured  fancies  discarded  in  despair  as  un- 
manageable —  at  the  cautious  selections  and  rejections  —  at  the 
painful  erasures  and  interpolations  —  in  a  word,  at  the  wheels 
and  pinions  —  the  tackle  for  scene-shifting  —  the  step-ladders 
and  demon-traps  —  the  cock's  feathers,  the  red  paint  and  the 
black  patches,  which,  in  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  the  hundred, 
constitute  the  properties  of  the  literary  histrio. 

I  am  aware,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the  case  is  by  no  means 
common  in  which  an  author  is  at  all  in  condition  to  retrace  the 
steps  by  which  his  conclusions  have  been  attained.  In  general, 
suggestions,  having  arisen  pell-mell,  are  pursued  and  forgotten 
in  a  similar  manner. 

For  my  own  part,  I  have  neither  sympathy  with  the  repugnance 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMPOSITION  259 

alluded  to,  nor,  at  any  time,  the  least  difficulty  in  recalling  to 
mind  the  progressive  steps  of  any  of  my  compositions ;  and,  since 
the, interest  of  an  analysis,  or  reconstruction,  such  as  I  have  con- 
sidered a  desideratum,  is  quite  independent  of  any  real  or  fancied 
interest  in  the  thing  analyzed,  it  will  not  be  regarded  as  a  breach 
of  decorum  on  my  part  to  show  the  modus  operandi  by  which 
some  one  of  my  own  works  was  put  together.  I  select  The 
Raven  as  most  generally  known.  It  is  my  design  to  render  it 
manifest  that  no  one  point  in  its  composition  is  referable  either 
to  accident  or  intuition  —  that  the  work  proceeded  step  by  step 
to  its  completion  with  the  precision  and  rigid  consequence  of  a 
mathematical  problem. 

Let  us  dismiss,  as  irrelevant  to  the  poem,  per  se,  the  circum- 
stance —  or  say  the  necessity  —  which,  in  the  first  place,  gave 
rise  to  the  intention  of  composing  a  poem  that  should  suit  at  once 
the  popular  and  the  critical  taste. 

We  commence,  then,  with  this  intention. 

The  initial  consideration  was  that  of  extent.  If  any  literary 
work  is  too  long  to  be  read  at  one  sitting,  we  must  be  content  to 
dispense  with  the  immensely  important  effect  derivable  from 
unity  of  impression  —  for,  if  two  sittings  be  required,  the  affairs 
of  the  world  interfere,  and  everything  like  totality  is  at  once 
destroyed.  But  since,  ceteris  paribus,^  no  poet  can  afford  to 
dispense  with  anything  that  may  advance  his  design,  it  but  remains 
to  be  seen  whether  there  is,  in  extent,  any  advantage  to  counter- 
balance the  loss  of  unity  which  attends  it.  Here  I  say  no  at  once. 
What  we  term  a  long  poem  is,  in  fact,  merely  a  succession  of  brief 
ones  —  that  is  to  say,  of  brief  poetical  effects.  It  is  needless  to 
demonstrate  that  a  poem  is  such  only  inasmuch  as  it  intensely 
excites,  by  elevating  the  soul;  and  all  intense  excitements  are, 
through  a  psychal  necessity,  brief.  For  this  reason  at  least  one- 
half  of  the  Paradise  Lost  is  essentially  prose  —  a  succession  of 
poetical  excitements  interspersed,  inevitably,  with  corresponding 
depressions  —  the  whole  being  de])rived,  through  the  extreme- 
ness of  its  length,  of  the  vastly  important  artistic  element,  totality, 
or  unity  of  effect. 

It  appears  evident,  then,  that  there  is  a  distinct  limit,  as  regards 
length,  to  all  works  of  literary  art  —  the  limit  of  a  single  sitting  — 
and  that,  although  in  certain  classes  of  pure  composition,  such  as 
Robinson  Crusoe  (demanding  no  unity),  this  limit  may  be  advan- 

'  [Other  things  being  equal.] 


26o  EDGAR   ALLAN   FOE 

tageously  overpassed,  it  can  never  properly  be  overpassed  in  a 
poem.  Within  this  limit  the  extent  of  a  poem  may  be  made  to 
bear  mathematical  relation  to  its  merit  —  in  other  words,  to  the 
excitement  or  elevation  —  again,  in  other  words,  to  the  degree  of 
the  true  poetical  effect  which  it  is  capable  of  inducing;  for  it  is 
clear  that  the  brevity  must  be  in  direct  ratio  of  the  intensity  of 
the  intended  effect  —  this,  with  one  proviso  —  that  a  certain 
degree  of  duration  is  absolutely  requisite  for  the  production  of 
any  effect  at  all. 

Holding  in  view  these  considerations,  as  well  as  that  degree 
of  excitement  which  I  deemed  not  above  the  popular,  while  not 
below  the  critical  taste,  I  reached  at  once  what  I  conceived  the 
proper  length  for  my  intended  poem  —  a  length  of  about  one 
hundred  lines.     It  is,  in  fact,  a  hundred  and  eight. 

My  next  thought  concerned  the  choice  of  an  impression,  or 
effect,  to  be  conveyed:  and  here  I  may  as  well  observe  that, 
throughout  the  construction,  I  kept  steadily  in  view  the  design 
of  rendering  the  work  universally  appreciable.  I  should  be  carried 
too  far  out  of  my  immediate  topic  were  I  to  demonstrate  a  point 
upon  which  I  have  repeatedly  insisted,  and  which,  with  the  poetical, 
stands  not  in  the  slightest  need  of  demonstration  —  the  point, 
I  mean,  that  Beauty  is  the  sole  legitimate  province  of  the  poem. 
A  few  words,  however,  in  elucidation  of  my  real  meaning,  which 
some  of  my  friends  have  evinced  a  disposition  to  misrepresent. 
That  pleasure  which  is  at  once  the  most  intense,  the  most  elevating, 
and  the  most  pure,  is,  I  believe,  found  in  the  contemplation  of 
the  beautiful.  When,  indeed,  men  speak  of  Beauty,  they  mean, 
precisely,  not  a  quality,  as  is  supposed,  but  an  effect  —  they  refer, 
in  short,  just  to  that  intense  and  pure  elevation  of  soul  —  not  of 
intellect,  or  of  heart  —  upon  which  I  have  commented,  and  which 
is  experienced  in  consequence  of  contemplating  "the beautiful." 
Now  I  designate  Beauty  as  the  province  of  the  poem,  merely 
because  it  is  an  obvious  rule  of  Art  that  effects  should  be  made 
to  spring  from  direct  causes  —  that  objects  should  be  attained 
through  means  best  adapted  for  their  attainment  —  no  one  as 
yet  having  been  weak  enough  to  deny  that  the  peculiar  elevation 
alluded  to,  is  most  readily  attained  in  the  poem.  Now,  the  object 
Truth,  or  the  satisfaction  of  the  intellect,  and  the  object  Passion, 
or  the  excitement  of  the  heart,  are,  although  attainable  to  a  certain 
extent  in  poetry,  far  more  readily  attainable  in  prose.  Truth, 
in  fact,  demands  a  precision,  and  Passion  a  homeliness  (the  truly 


THE  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMPOSITION  26 1 

passionate  will  comprehend  me)  which  are  absolutely  antagonistic 
to  that  Beauty  which,  I  maintain,  is  the  excitement,  or  pleasurable 
elevation,  of  the  soul.  It  by  no  means  follows  from  anything 
here  said  that  passion,  or  even  truth,  may  not  be  introduced,  and 
even  profitably  introduced,  into  a  poem  —  for  they  may  serve 
in  elucidation,  or  aid  the  general  effect,  as  do  discords  in  music, 
by  contrast  —  but  the  true  artist  will  always  contrive,  first,  to 
tone  them  into  proper  subservience  to  the  predominant  aim,  and, 
secondly,  to  enveil  them,  as  far  as  possible,  in  that  Beauty  which 
is  the  atmosphere  and  the  essence  of  the  poem. 

Regarding,  then,  Beauty  as  my  province,  my  next  question 
referred  to  the  tone  of  its  highest  manifestation  —  and  all  experi- 
ence has  shown  that  this  tone  is  one  of  sadness.  Beauty  of  what- 
ever kind,  in  its  supreme  development,  invariably  excites  the 
sensitive  soul  to  tears.  Melancholy  is  thus  the  most  legitimate  of 
all  the  poetical  tones. 

The  length,  the  province,  and  the  tone,  being  thus  determined, 
I  betook  myself  to  ordinary  induction,  with  the  view  of  obtaining 
some  artistic  piquancy  which  might  serve  me  as  a  key-note  in 
the  construction  of  the  poem  —  some  pivot  upon  which  the  whole 
structure  might  turn.  In  carefully  thinking  over  all  the  usual 
artistic  effects  —  or  more  properly  points,  in  the  theatrical  sense 
—  I  did  not  fail  to  perceive  immediately  that  no  one  had  been 
so  universally  employed  as  that  of  the  refrain.  The  universality 
of  its  employment  sufficed  to  assure  me  of  its  intrinsic  value,  and 
spared  me  the  necessity  of  submitting  it  to  analysis.  I  considered 
it,  however,  with  regard  to  its  susceptibility  of  improvement,  and 
soon  saw  it  to  be  in  a  primitive  condition.  As  commonly  used, 
the  refrain,  or  burden,  not  only  is  limited  to  lyric  verse,  but  de- 
pends for  its  impression  upon  the  force  of  monotone  —  both  in 
sound  and  thought.  The  pleasure  is  deduced  solely  from  the 
sense  of  identity  —  of  repetition.  I  resolved  to  diversify,  and 
so  heighten  the  effect,  by  adhering  in  general  to  the  monotone  of 
sound,  while  I  continually  varied  that  of  thought :  that  is  to  say, 
I  determined  to  produce  continuously  novel  effects,  by  the  varia- 
tion of  the  application  —  of  the  refrain  —  the  refrain  itself  remain- 
ing, for  the  most  part,  unvaried. 

These  points  being  settled,  I  next  bethought  me  of  the  nature 
of  my  refrain.  Since  its  application  was  to  be  repeatedly  varied, 
it  was  clear  that  the  refrain  itself  must  be  brief,  for  there  would 
have  been  an  insurmountable  dilficulty   in  frequent  variations 


262  EDGAR  ALLAN   POE 

of  application  in  any  sentence  of  length.  In  proportion  to  the 
brevity  of  the  sentence  would,  of  course,  be  the  facility  of  the 
variation.     This  led  me  at  once  to  a  single  word  as  the  best  refrain. 

The  question  now  arose  as  to  the  character  of  the  word.  Having 
made  up  my  mind  to  a  refrain,  the  division  of  the  poem  into 
stanzas  was,  of  course,  a  corollary,  the  refrain  forming  the  close 
of  each  stanza.  That  such  a  close,  to  have  force,  must  be  sono- 
rous and  susceptible  of  protracted  emphasis,  admitted  no  doubt, 
and  these  considerations  inevitably  led  me  to  the  long  o  as  the 
most  sonorous  vowel  in  connection  with  r  as  the  most  producible 
consonant. 

The  sound  of  the  refrain  being  thus  determined,  it  became 
necessary  to  select  a  word  embodying  this  sound,  and  at  the  same 
time  in  the  fullest  possible  keeping  with  that  melancholy  which 
I  had  predetermined  as  the  tone  of  the  poem.  In  such  a  search 
it  would  have  been  absolutely  impossible  to  overlook  the  word 
"Nevermore."  In  fact,  it  was  the  very  first  which  presented 
itself. 

The  next  desideratum  was  a  pretext  for  the  continuous  use  of 
the  one  word  "nevermore."  In  observing  the  difficulty  which 
I  at  once  found  in  inventing  a  sufficiently  plausible  reason  for  its 
continuous  repetition,  I  did  not  fail  to  perceive  that  this  difficulty 
arose  solely  from  the  preassumption  that  the  word  was  to  be  so 
continuously  or  monotonously  spoken  by  a  human  b&ing  —  I  did 
not  fail  to  perceive,  in  short,  that  the  difficulty  lay  in  the  recon- 
ciliation of  this  monotony  with  the  exercise  of  reason  on  the  part 
of  the  creature  repeating  the  word.  Here,  then,  immediately 
arose  the  idea  of  a  «o»-reasoning  creature  capable  of  speech,  and 
very  naturally,  a  parrot,  in  the  first  instance,  suggested  itself,  but 
was  superseded  forthwith  by  a  Raven  as  equally  capable  of  speech, 
and  infinitely  more  in  keeping  with  the  intended  tone. 

I  had  now  gone  so  far  as  the  conception  of  a  Raven,  the  bird 
of  ill-omen,  monotonously  repeating  the  one  word  "Nevermore" 
at  the  conclusion  of  each  stanza  in  the  poem  of  melancholy  tone, 
and  in  length  about  one  hundred  lines.  Now,  never  losing  sight 
of  the  object  —  supremeness  or  perfection  at  all  points,  I  asked 
myself — "Of  all  melancholy  topics  what,  according  to  the  uni- 
versal understanding  of  mankind,  is  the  most  melancholy?" 
Death,  was  the  obvious  reply.  "And  when,"  I  said,  "is  this 
most  melancholy  of  to[)ics  most  poetical?"  From  what  I  have 
already  explained  at  some  length  the  answer  here  also  is  obvious 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMPOSITION  263 

—  "When  it  most  closely  allies  itself  to  Beauty:  the  death,  then, 
of  a  beautiful  woman  is  unquestionably  the  most  poetical  topic 
in  the  world,  and  equally  is  it  beyond  doubt  that  the  lips  best  suited 
for  such  topic  are  those  of  a  bereaved  lover." 

I  had  now  to  combine  the  two  ideas  of  a  lover  lamenting  his 
deceased  mistress  and  a  Raven  continuously  repeating  the  word 
"Nevermore."  I  had  to  combine  these,  bearing  in  mind  my 
design  of  varying  at  every  turn  the  application  of  the  word  repeated, 
but  the  only  intelligible  mode  of  such  combination  is  that  of  imagin- 
ing the  Raven  employing  the  word  in  answer  to  the  queries  of  the 
lover.  And  here  it  was  that  I  saw  at  once  the  opportunity  afforded 
for  the  effect  on  which  I  had  been  depending,  that  is  to  say,  the 
effect  of  the  variation  of  application.  I  saw  that  I  could  make 
the  first  query  propounded  by  the  lover  —  the  first  query  to  which 
the  Raven  should  reply  "Nevermore"  —  that  I  could  make  this 
first  query  a  commonplace  one,  the  second  less  so,  the  third  still 
less,  and  so  on,  until  at  length  the  lover,  startled  from  his  original 
nonchalance  by  the  melancholy  character  of  the  word  itself,  by 
its  frequent  repetition,  and  by  a  consideration  of  the  ominous 
reputation  of  the  fowl  that  uttered  it,  is  at  length  excited  to  super- 
stition, and  wildly  propounds  queries  of  a  far  different  character 

—  queries  whose  solution  he  has  passionately  at  heart  —  pro- 
pounds them  half  in  superstition  and  half  in  that  species  of  despair 
which  delights  in  self-torture  —  propounds  them  not  altogether 
because  he  believes  in  the  prophetic  or  demoniac  character  of 
the  bird  (which  reason  assures  him  is  merely  repeating  a  lesson 
learned  by  rote),  but  because  he  experiences  a  frenzied  pleasure 
in  so  modelling  his  questions  as  to  receive  from  the  expected 
"Nevermore"  the  most  delicious  because  the  most  intolerable 
of  sorrows.  Perceiving  the  opportunity  thus  afforded  me,  or, 
more  strictly,  thus  forced  upon  me  in  the  progress  of  construction, 
I  first  established  in  my  mind  the  climax  or  concluding  query  — 
that  query  to  which  "Nevermore"  should  be  in  the  last  place  an 
answer  —  that  query  in  reply  to  which  this  word  "Nevermore" 
should  involve  the  utmost  conceivable  amount  of  sorrow  and 
despair. 

Here,  then,  the  poem  may  be  said  to  have  had  its  beginning, 
at  the  end  where  all  works  of  art  should  begin,  for  it  was  here  at 
this  point  of  my  preconsiderations  that  I  first  put  pen  to  paper  in 
the  composition  of  the  stanza :  — 


264  EDGAR  ALLAN   FOE 

"  Prophet ! "    said  I,  "  thing  of  evil !   prophet  still  if  bird  or  devil ! 
By  that  Heaven  that  bends  above  us  —  by  that  God  we  both  adore, 
Tell  this  soul  with  sorrow  laden  if,  within  the  distant  Aidenn, 
It  shall  clasp  a  sainted  maiden  whom  the  angels  name  Lenore  — 
Clasp  a  rare  and  radiant  maiden  whom  the  angels  name  Lenore." 
Quoth  the  Raven  —  "Nevermore." 

I  composed  this  stanza,  at  this  point,  first,  that,  by  estabhshing 
the  climax,  I  might  the  better  vary  and  graduate,  as  regards  seri- 
ousness and  importance,  the  preceding  queries  of  the  lover,  and 
secondly,  that  I  might  definitely  settle  the  rhythm,  the  metre, 
and  the  length  and  general  arrangement  of  the  stanza,  as  well  as 
graduate  the  stanzas  which  were  to  precede,  so  that  none  of  them 
might  surpass  this  in  rhythmical  effect.  Had  I  been  able  in  the 
subsequent  composition  to  construct  more  vigorous  stanzas  I 
should  without  scruple  have  purposely  enfeebled  them  so  as  not 
to  interfere  with  the  climacteric  effect. 

And  here  I  may  as  well  say  a  few  words  of  the  versification. 
My  first  object  (as  usual)  was  originality.  The  extent  to  which 
this  has  been  neglected  in  versification  is  one  of  the  most  unac- 
countable things  in  the  world.  Admitting  that  there  is  little 
possibility  of  variety  in  mere  rliytJim,  it  is  still  clear  that  the  possible 
varieties  of  metre  and  stanza  are  absolutely  infinite,  and  yet,  foy 
centuries,  no  man,  in  verse,  has  ever  done,  or  ever  seemed  to  think 
of  doing,  an  original  thing.  The  fact  is  that  originality  (unless 
in  minds  of  very  unusual  force)  is  by  no  means  a  matter,  as  some 
suppose,  of  impulse  or  intuition.  In  general,  to  be  found,  it 
must  be  elaborately  sought,  and  although  a  positive  merit  of  the 
highest  class,  demands  in  its  attainment  less  of  invention  than 
negation. 

Of  course,  I  pretend  to  no  originality  in  either  the  rhythm  or 
metre  of  the  Raven.  The  former  is  trochaic  —  the  latter  is 
octametre  acatalectic,  alternating  with  heptametre  catalectic 
repeated  in  the  refrain  of  the  fifth  verse,  and  terminating  with 
tetrametre  catalectic.  Less  pedantically  —  the  feet  employed 
throughout  (trochees)  consist  of  a  long  syllable  followed  by  a  short ; 
the  first  line  of  the  stanza  consists  of  eight  of  these  feet,  the  second 
of  seven  and  a  half  (in  effect  two-thirds),  the  third  of  eight,  the 
fourth  of  seven  and  a  half,  the  fifth  the  same,  the  sixth  three  and 
a  half.  Now,  each  of  these  lines  taken  individually  has  been 
employed  before,  and  what  originality  the  Raven  has,  is  in 
their  combination  into  stanza,  nothing  even  remotely  approaching 


THE  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMPOSITION  265 

this  combination  has  ever  been  attempted.  The  effect  of  this 
originahty  of  combination  is  aided  by  other  unusual  and  some 
ahogether  novel  effects,  arising  from  an  extension  of  the  applica- 
tion of  the  principles  of  rhyme  and  alliteration. 

The  next  point  to  be  considered  was  the  mode  of  bringing 
together  the  lover  and  the  Raven  —  and  the  first  branch  of  this 
consideration  was  the  locale.  For  this  the  most  natural  suggestion 
might  seem  to  be  a  forest,  or  the  fields  —  but  it  has  always  ap- 
peared to  me  that  a  close  circumscription  of  space  is  absolutely 
necessary  to  the  effect  of  insulated  incident  —  it  has  the  force  of 
a  frame  to  a  picture.  It  has  an  indisputable  moral  power  in 
keeping  concentrated  the  attention,  and,  of  course,  must  not  be 
confounded  with  mere  unity  of  place. 

I  determined,  then,  to  place  the  lover  in  his  chamber  —  in  a 
chamber  rendered  sacred  to  him  by  memories  of  her  who  had 
frequented  it.  The  room  is  represented  as  richly  furnished  — 
this  in  mere  pursuance  of  the  ideas  I  have  already  explained  on 
the  subject  of  Beauty,  as  the  sole  true  poetical  thesis. 

The  locale  being  thus  determined,  I  had  now  to  introduce  the 
bird  —  and  the  thought  of  introducing  him  through  the  window 
was  inevitable.  The  idea  of  making  the  lover  suppose,  in  the 
first  instance,  that  the  flapping  of  the  wings  of  the  bird  against 
the  shutter  is  a  "tapping"  at  the  door,  originated  in  a  wish  to 
increase,  by  prolonging  the  reader's  curiosity,  and  in  a  desire  to 
admit  the  incidental  effect  arising  from  the  lover's  throwing  open 
the  door,  finding  all  dark,  and  thence  adopting  the  half-fancy 
that  it  was  the  spirit  of  his  mistress  that  knocked. 

I  made  the  night  tempestuous,  first  to  account  for  the  Raven's 
seeking  admission,  and  secondly,  for  the  effect  of  contrast  with 
the  (physical)  serenity  within  the  chamber. 

I  made  the  bird  alight  on  the  bust  of  Pallas,  also  for  the  effect 
of  contrast  between  the  marble  and  the  plumage  —  it  being  under- 
stood that  the  bust  was  absolutely  suggested  by  the  bird  —  the 
bust  of  Pallas  being  chosen,  first,  as  most  in  keeping  with  the 
scholarship  of  the  lover,  and,  secondly,  for  the  sonorousness  of 
the  word,  Pallas,  itself. 

About  the  middle  of  the  poem,  also,  I  have  availed  myself  of 
the  force  of  contrast,  with  a  view  of  deepening  the  ultimate  impres- 
sion. For  example,  an  air  of  the  fantastic  —  approaching  as 
nearly  to  the  ludicrous  as  was  admissible  —  is  given  to  the  Raven's 
entrance.     He  comes  in  "with  many  a  flirt  and  flutter." 


266  EDGAR  ALLAN   POE 

Not  the  least  obeisance  made  he  —  not  a  moment  stopped  or  stayed  he, 
But,  with  mien  of  lord  or  lady,  perched  above  my  chamber  door. 

In  the  two  stanzas  which  follow,  the  design  is  more  obviously 
carried  out :  — 

Then  this  ebony  bird,  beguiling  my  sad  fancy  into  smiHng 
By  the  grave  and  stern  decorum  of  the  countenance  it  wore, 
"Though  thv  crest  be  shorn  and  shaven,  thou,"  I  said,  "art  sure  no  craven, 
Ghastly  grirn  and  ancient  Raven  wandering  from  the  Nightly  shore  — 
Tell  me  what  thy  lordly  name  is  on  the  Night's  Plutonian  shore?" 
Quoth  the  Raven,  "Nevermore." 

Much  I  marvelled  this  ungainly  fowl  to  hear  discourse  so  plainly, 
Though  its  answer  little  meaning  —  little  relevancy  bore ; 
For  we  cannot  help  agreeing  that  no  living  human  being 
Ever  yet  was  blessed  with  seeing  bird  above  his  chamber  door  — 
Bird  or  beast  upon  the  sculptured  bust  above  his  chamber  door, 
With  such  name  as  "Nevermore." 

The  effect  of  the  denouement  being  thus  provided  for,  I  imme- 
diately drop  the  fantastic  for  a  tone  of  the  most  profound  serious- 
ness —  this  tone  commencing  in  the  stanza  directly  following 
the  one  last  quoted,  with  the  line  — 

But  the  Raven,  sitting  lonely  on  that  placid  bust,  spoke  only,  etc. 

From  this  epoch  the  lover  no  longer  jests  —  no  longer  sees 
anything  even  of  the  fantastic  in  the  Raven's  demeanour.  He 
speaks  of  him  as  a  "grim,  ungainly,  ghastly,  gaunt,  and  ominous 
bird  of  yore,"  and  feels  the  "fiery  eyes"  burning  into  his  "bosom's 
core."  This  revolution  of  thought,  or  fancy,  on  the  lover's  part, 
is  intended  to  induce  a  similar  one  on  the  part  of  the  reader  — 
to  bring  the  mind  into  a  proper  frame  for  their  denouement  — 
which  is  now  brought  about  as  rapidly  and  as  directly  as  possible. 

With  the  denouement  proper  —  with  the  Raven's  reply,  "Never- 
more," to  the  lover's  final  demand  if  he  shall  meet  his  mistress  in 
another  world  —  the  poem,  in  its  obvious  phase,  that  of  a  simple 
narrative,  may  be  said  to  have  its  completion.  So  far,  everything 
is  within  the  limits  of  the  accountable  —  of  the  real.  A  raven,  hav- 
ing learned  by  rote  the  single  word  "Nevermore,"  and  having 
escaped  from  the  custody  of  its  owner,  is  driven  at  midnight,  through 
the  violence  of  a  storm,  to  seek  admission  at  a  window  from  which 
a  light  still  gleams  —  the  chamber-window  of  a  student,  occupied 
half  in  poring  over  a  volume,  half  in  dreaming  of  a  beloved  mis- 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMPOSITION  267 

tress  deceased.  The  casement  being  thrown  open  at  the  fluttering 
of  the  bird's  wings,  the  bird  itself  perches  on  the  most  convenient 
seat  out  of  the  immediate  reach  of  the  student,  who,  amused  by  the 
incident  and  the  oddity  of  the  visitor's  demeanour,  demands  of  it, 
in  jest  and  without  looking  for  a  reply,  its  name.  The  raven  ad- 
dressed, answers  with  its  customary  word,  "Nevermore"  —  a 
word  which  finds  immediate  echo  in  the  melancholy  heart  of  the 
student,  who,  giving  utterance  aloud  to  certain  thoughts  suggested 
by  the  occasion,  is  again  startled  by  the  fowl's  repetition  of  "Never- 
more." The  student  now  guesses  the  state  of  the  case,  but  is 
impelled,  as  I  have  before  explained,  by  the  human  thirst  for  self- 
torture,  and  in  part  by  superstition,  to  propound  such  queries  to 
the  bird  as  will  bring  him,  the  lover,  the  most  of  the  luxury  of 
sorrow,  through  the  anticipated  answer  "Nevermore."  With  the 
indulgence,  to  the  extreme,  of  this  self-torture,  the  narration,  in 
what  I  have  termed  its  first  or  obvious  phase,  has  a  natural  termi- 
nation, and  so  far  there  has  been  no  overstepping  of  the  limits  of 
the  real. 

But  in  subjects  so  handled,  however  skilfully,  or  with  however 
vivid  an  array  of  incident,  there  is  always  a  certain  hardness  or 
nakedness  which  repels  the  artistical  eye.  Two  things  are  in- 
variably required  —  first,  some  amount  of  complexity,  or  more 
properly,  adaptation;  and,  secondly,  some  amount  of  suggestive- 
ness  —  some  undercurrent,  however  indefinite,  of  meaning.  It 
is  this  latter,  in  especial,  which  imparts  to  a  work  of  art  so  much 
of  that  richness  (to  borrow  from  colloquy  a  forcible  term)  which 
we  are  too  fond  of  confounding  with  the  ideal.  It  is  the  excess  of 
the  suggested  meaning  —  it  is  the  rendering  this  the  upper  instead 
of  the  undercurrent  of  the  theme  —  which  turns  into  prose  (and 
that  of  the  very  flattest  kind)  the  so-called  poetry  of  the  so-called 
transcendentalists. 

Holding  these  opinions,  I  added  the  two  concluding  stanzas  of 
the  poem  —  their  suggestiveness  being  thus  made  to  pervade  all 
the  narrative  which  has  preceded  them.  The  undercurrent  of 
meaning  is  rendered  first  apparent  in  the  lines :  — 

"Take  thy  beak  from  out  my  heart,  and  take  thy  form  from  off  my  door  !" 
Quoth  the  Raven,  "Nevermore  !  " 

It  will  be  observed  that  the  words,  "from  out  my  heart,"  involve 
the  first  metaphorical  expression  in  the  poem.  They,  with  the 
answer,  "Nevermore,"  dispose  the  mind  to  seek  a  moral  in  all 


268  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

that  has  been  previously  narrated.  The  reader  begins  now  to 
regard  the  Raven  as  emblematical  —  but  it  is  not  until  the  very 
last  line  of  the  very  last  stanza  that  the  intention  of  making  him 
emblematical  of  Mournful  and  never-ending  Remembrance  is  per- 
mitted distinctly  to  be  seen :  — 

And  the  Raven,  never  flitting,  still  is  sitting,  still  is  sitting, 
On  the  pallid  bust  of  Pallas  just  above  my  chamber  door; 
And  his  eyes  have  all  the  seeming  of  a  demon's  that  is  dreaming, 
And  the  lamplight  o'er  him  streaming  throws  his  shadow  on  the  floor ; 
And  my  soul  Jro7n  out  that  shadow  that  lies  floating  on  the  floor 
Shall  be  lifted  —  nevermore. 


XIII 

MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

(1822-1888) 

THE   STUDY   OF   POETRY 

[Published  in  1880  as  the  General  Introduction  to  The  English  Poets, 
edited  by  T.  H.  Ward.     Printed  in  Essays  in  Criticism,  Second  Series^ 

"The  future  of  poetry  is  immense,  because  in  poetry,  where  it 
is  worthy  of  its  high  destinies,  our  race,  as  time  goes  on,  will  find 
an  ever  surer  and  surer  stay.  There  is  not  a  creed  which  is  not 
shaken,  not  an  accredited  dogma  which  is  not  shown  to  be  question- 
able, not  a  received  tradition  which  does  not  threaten  to  dissolve. 
Our  religion  has  materialized  itself  in  the  fact,  in  the  supposed 
fact ;  it  has  attached  its  emotion  to  the  fact,  and  now  the  fact  is 
failing  it.  But  for  poetry  the  idea  is  everything ;  the  rest  is  a  world 
of  illusion,  of  divine  illusion.  Poetry  attaches  its  emotion  to  the 
idea ;  the  idea  is  the  fact.  The  strongest  part  of  our  religion  to-day 
is  its  unconscious  poetry." 

Let  me  be  permitted  to  quote  these  words  of  my  own,  as  uttering 
the  thought  which  should,  in  my  opinion,  go  with  us  and  govern 
us  in  all  our  study  of  poetry.  In  the  present  work  it  is  the  course 
of  one  great  contributory  stream  to  the  world-river  of  poetry  that 
we  are  invited  to  follow.  We  are  here  invited  to  trace  the  stream 
of  English  poetry.  But  whether  we  set  ourselves,  as  here,  to  fol- 
low only  one  of  the  several  streams  that  make  the  mighty  river  of 
poetry,  or  whether  we  seek  to  know  them  all,  our  governing  thought 
should  be  the  same.  We  should  conceive  of  poetry  worthily,  and 
more  highly  than  it  has  been  the  custom  to  conceive  of  it.  We 
should  conceive  of  it  as  capable  of  higher  uses,  and  called  to  higher 
destinies,  than  those  which  in  general  men  have  assigned  to  it 
hitherto.     More  and  more  mankind  will  discover  that  we  have  to 

269 


270 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 


turn  to  poetry  to  interpret  life  for  us,  to  console  us,  to  sustain  us. 
Without  poetry,  our  science  will  appear  incomplete ;   and  most  of 
what  now  passes  with  us  for  religion  and  philosophy  will  be  replaced 
by  poetry.     Science,  I  say,  will  appear  incomplete  without  it.     For 
finely  and  truly  does  Wordsworth  call  poetry  "the  impassioned 
expression  which  is  in  the  countenance  of  all  science";   and  what 
is  a  countenance  without   its   expression?     Again,   Wordsworth 
finely  and  truly  calls  poetry  "the  breath  and  liner  spirit  of  all 
knowledge":    our  religion,  parading  evidences  such  as  those  on 
which  the  popular  mind  relies  now ;  our  philosophy,  pluming  itself 
on  its  reasonings  about  causation  and  finite  and  infinite  being; 
what  are  they  but  the  shadows  and  dreams  and  false  shows  of 
knowledge?     The  day  will  come  when  we  shall  wonder  at  our- 
selves for  having  trusted  to  them,  for  having  taken  them  seriously; 
and  the  more  we  perceive  their  hollowness,  the  more  we  shall  prize 
"the  breath  and  finer  spirit  of  knowledge"  offered  to  us  by  poetry. 
But  if  we  conceive  thus  highly  of  the  destinies  of  poetry,  we  must 
also  set  our  standard  for  poetry  high,  since  poetry,  to  be  capable  of 
fulfilling  such  high  destinies,  must  be  poetry  of  a  high  order  of  ex- 
cellence.    We  must  accustom  ourselves  to  a  high  standard  and  to  a 
strict  judgment.     Sainte-Beuve  relates  that  Napoleon  one  day  said, 
when  somebody  was  spoken  of  in  his  presence  as  a  charlatan: 
"Charlatan  as  much  as  you  please;   but  where  is  there  not  charla- 
tanism?" —  "Yes,"  answers  Sainte-Beuve,  "in  politics,  in  the  art 
of  governing  mankind,  that  is  perhaps  true.     But  in  the  order  of 
thought,  in  art,  the  glory,  the  eternal  honour  is  that  charlatanism 
shall  find  no  entrance ;  herein  lies  the  inviolableness  of  that  noble 
portion  of  man's  being."     It  is  admirably  said,  and  let  us  hold 
fast  to  it.     In  poetry,  which  is  thought  and  art  in  one,  it  is  the  glory, 
the  eternal  honour,  that  charlatanism  shall  find  no  entrance ;   that 
this  noble  sphere  be  kept  inviolate  and  inviolable.     Charlatanism 
is  for  confusing  or  obliterating  the  distinctions  between  excellent 
and  inferior,  sound  and  unsound  or  only  half-sound,  true  and  un- 
true or  only  half-true.    It  is  charlatanism,  conscious  or  unconscious, 
whenever  we  confuse  or  obliterate  these.     And  in  poetry,  more  than 
anywhere  else,  it  is  unpermissible  to  confuse  or  obliterate  them. 
For  in  poetry  the  distinction  between  excellent  and  inferior,  sound 
and  unsound  or  only  half-sound,  true  and  untrue  or  only  half-true, 
is  of  paramount  importance.     It  is  of  paramount  importance  be- 
cause of  the  high  destinies  of  poetry.     In  poetry,  as  a  criticism  of 
life  under  the  conditions  fixed  for  such  a  criticism  by  the  laws  of 


THE  STUDY  OF  POETRY  271 

poetic  truth  and  poetic  beauty,  the  spirit  of  our  race  will  find,  we 
have  said,  as  time  goes  on  and  as  other  helps  fail,  its  consolation 
and  stay.  But  the  consolation  and  stay  will  be  of  power  in  pro- 
portion to  the  power  of  the  criticism  of  life.  And  the  criticism  of 
life  will  be  of  power  in  proportion  as  the  poetry  conveying  it  is  ex- 
cellent rather  than  inferior,  sound  rather  than  unsound  or  half- 
sound,  true  rather  than  untrue  or  half-true. 

The  best  poetry  is  what  we  want;  the  best  poetry  will  be  found 
to  have  a  power  of  forming,  sustaining,  and  delighting  us,  as  noth- 
ing else  can.  A  clearer,  deeper  sense  of  the  best  in  poetry,  and  of 
the  strength  and  joy  to  be  drawn  from  it,  is  the  most  precious 
benefit  which  we  can  gather  from  a  poetical  collection  such  as  the 
present.  And  yet  in  the  very  nature  and  conduct  of  such  a  collec- 
tion there  is  inevitably  something  which  tends  to  obscure  in  us  the 
consciousness  of  what  our  benefit  should  be,  and  to  distract  us 
from  the  pursuit  of  it.  We  should  therefore  steadily  set  it  before 
our  minds  at  the  outset,  and  should  compel  ourselves  to  revert  con- 
stantly to  the  thought  of  it  as  we  proceed. 

Yes;  constantly  in  reading  poetry,  a  sense  for  the  best,  the  really 
excellent,  and  of  the  strength  and  joy  to  be  drawn  from  it,  should 
be  present  in  our  minds  and  should  govern  our  estimate  of  what 
we  read.  But  this  real  estimate,  the  only  true  one,  is  liable  to  be 
superseded,  if  we  are  not  watchful,  by  two  other  kinds  of  estimate, 
the  historic  estimate  and  the  personal  estimate,  both  of  which  are 
fallacious.  A  poet  or  a  poem  may  count  to  us  historically,  they 
may  count  to  us  on  grounds  personal  to  ourselves,  and  they  may 
count  to  us  really.  They  may  count  to  us  historically.  The 
course  of  development  of  a  nation's  language,  thought,  and  poetry, 
is  profoundly  interesting;  and  by  regarding  a  poet's  work  as  a 
stage  in  this  course  of  development  we  may  easily  bring  ourselves 
to  make  it  of  more  importance  as  poetry  than  in  itself  it  really  is, 
we  may  come  to  use  a  language  of  quite  exaggerated  praise  in 
criticising  it ;  in  short,  to  overrate  it.  So  arises  in  our  poetic  judg- 
ments the  fallacy  caused  by  the  estimate  which  we  may  call  his- 
toric. Then,  again,  a  poet  or  a  poem  may  count  to  us  on  grounds 
personal  to  ourselves.  Our  personal  affinities,  likings,  and  circum- 
stances, have  great  power  to  sway  our  estimate  of  this  or  that  poet's 
work,  and  to  make  us  attach  more  importance  to  it  as  poetry  than 
in  itself  it  really  possesses,  because  to  us  it  is,  or  has  been,  of  high 
importance.  Here  also  we  overrate  the  object  of  our  interest,  and 
apply  to  it  a  language  of  praise  which  is  quite  exaggerated.     And 


272  MATTHEW,  ARNOLD 

thus  we  get  the  source  of  a  second  fallacy  in  our  poetic  judgments 
—  the  fallacy  caused  by  an  estimate  which  we  may  call  personal. 

Both  fallacies  are  natural.  It  is  evident  how  naturally  the  study 
of  the  history  and  development  of  a  poetry  may  incline  a  man  to 
pause  over  reputations  and  works  once  conspicuous  but  now  ob- 
scure, and  to  quarrel  with  a  careless  public  for  skipping,  in  obedi- 
ence to  mere  tradition  and  habit,  from  one  famous  name  or  work 
in  its  national  poetry  to  another,  ignorant  of  what  it  misses,  and  of 
the  reason  for  keeping  what  it  keeps,  and  of  the  whole  process  of 
growth  in  its  poe'ry.  The  French  have  become  diligent  students 
of  their  own  early  poetry,  which  they  long  neglected;  the  study 
makes  many  of  them  dissatisfied  with  their  so-called  classical  poetry, 
the  court-tragedy  of  the  seventeenth  century,  a  poetry  which  Pellis- 
son  long  ago  reproached  with  its  want  of  the  true  poetic  stamp, 
with  its  politesse  sterile  et  rampante,^  but  which  nevertheless  has 
reigned  in  France  as  absolutely  as  if  it  had  been  the  perfection  of 
classical  poetry  indeed.  The  dissatisfaction  is  natural ;  yet  a  lively 
and  accomplished  critic,  M.  Charles  d'Hericault,  the  editor  of 
Clement  Marot,  goes  too  far  when  he  says  that  "the  cloud  of  glory 
playing  round  a  classic  is  a  mist  as  dangerous  to  the  future  of  a 
literature  as  it  is  intolerable  for  the  purposes  of  history."  "It 
hinders,"  he  goes  on,  "it  hinders  us  from  seeing  more  than  one  sin- 
gle point,  the  culminating  and  exceptional  point;  the  summary, 
fictitious  and  arbitrary,  of  a  thought  and  of  a  work.  It  substitutes 
a  halo  for  a  physiognomy,  it  puts  a  statue  where  there  was  once  a 
man,  and  hiding  from  us  all  trace  of  the  labour,  the  attempts,  the 
weaknesses,  the  failures,  it  claims  not  study  but  veneration;  it 
does  not  show  us  how  the  thing  is  done,  it  imposes  upon  us  a  model. 
Above  all,  for  the  historian  this  creation  of  classic  personages  is 
inadmissible;  for  it  withdraws  the  poet  from  his  time,  from  his 
proper  life,  it  breaks  historical  relationships,  it  blinds  criticism 
by  conventional  admiration,  and  renders  the  investigation  of  liter- 
ary origins  unacceptable.  It  gives  us  a  human  personage  no 
longer,  but  a  God  seated  immovable  amidst  His  perfect  work,  like 
Jupiter  on  Olympus;  and  hardly  will  it  be  possible  for  the  young 
student,  to  whom  such  work  is  exhibited  at  such  a  distance  from 
him,  to  believe  that  it  did  not  issue  ready  made  from  that  divine 
head." 

All  this  is  brilliantly  and  tellingly  said,  but  we  must  plead  for  a 
distinction.     Everything  depends  on  the  reality  of  a  poet's  classic 

'  [With  its  unfertile  and  obtrusive  polish.] 


THE  STUDY  OF  POETRY  273 

character.  If  he  is  a  dubious  classic,  let  us  sift  him ;  if  he  is  a  false 
classic,  let  us  explode  him.  But  if  he  is  a  real  classic,  if  his 
work  belongs  to  the  class  of  the  very  best  (for  this  is  the  true  and 
right  meaning  of  the  word  classic,  classical),  then  the  great  thing 
for  us  is  to  feel  and  enjoy  his  work  as  deeply  as  ever  we  can,  and  to 
appreciate  the  wide  difference  between  it  and  all  work  which  has 
not  the  same  high  character.  This  is  what  is  salutary,  this  is  what 
is  formative ;  this  is  the  great  benefit  to  be  got  from  the  study  of 
poetry.  Everything  which  interferes  with  it,  which  hinders  it, 
is  injurious.  True,  we  must  read  our  classic  with  open  eyes,  and 
not  with  eyes  blinded  with  superstition;  we  must  perceive  when  his 
work  comes  short,  when  it  drops  out  of  the  class  of  the  very  best, 
and  we  must  rate  it,  in  such  cases,  at  its  proper  value.  But  the  use 
of  this  negative  criticism  is  not  in  itself,  it  is  entirely  in  its  enabling 
us  to  have  a  clearer  sense  and  a  deeper  enjoyment  of  what  is  truly 
excellent.  To  trace  the  labour,  the  attempts,  the  weaknesses,  the 
failures  of  a  genuine  classic,  to  acquaint  one's  self  with  his  time 
and  his  life  and  his  historical  relationships,  is  mere  literary  dilet- 
tantism unless  it  has  that  clear  sense  and  deeper  enjoyment  for  its 
end.  It  may  be  said  that  the  more  we  know  about  a  classic  the 
better  we  shall  enjoy  him ;  and,  if  we  lived  as  long  as  Methuselah 
and  had  all  of  us  heads  of  perfect  clearness  and  wills  of  perfect 
steadfastness,  this  might  be  true  in  fact  as  it  is  plausible  in  theory. 
But  the  case  here  is  much  the  same  as  the  case  with  the  Greek  and 
Latin  studies  of  our  schoolboys.  The  elaborate  philological  ground- 
work which  we  require  them  to  lay  is  in  theory  an  admirable  prep- 
aration for  appreciating  the  Greek  and  Latin  authors  worthily, 
The  more  thoroughly  we  lay  the  groundwork,  the  better  we  shall 
be  able,  it  may  be  said,  to  enjoy  the  authors.  True,  if  time  were 
not  so  short,  and  schoolboys'  wits  not  so  soon  tired  and  their  power 
of  attention  exhausted;  only,  as  it  is,  the  elaborate  philological 
preparation  goes  on,  but  the  authors  are  little  known  and  less 
enjoyed.  So  with  the  investigator  of  "historic  origins"  in  poetry. 
He  ought  to  enjoy  the  true  classic  all  the  better  for  his  investiga- 
tions; he  often  is  distracted  from  the  enjoyment  of  the  best,  and 
with  the  less  good  he  overbusies  himself,  and  is  prone  to  overrate 
it  in  proportion  to  the  trouble  which  it  has  cost  him. 

The  idea  of  tracing  historic  origins  and  historical  relationships 
cannot  be  absent  from  a  compilation  like  the  present.  And  natu- 
rally the  poets  to  be  exhibited  in  it  will  be  assigned  to  those  persons 
for  exhibition  who  are  known  to  prize  them  highly,  rather  than  to 


274  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

those  who  have  no  special  inclination  towards  them.  Moreover 
the  very  occupation  with  an  author,  and  the  business  of  exhibiting 
him,  disposes  us  to  affirm  and  amplify  his  importance.  In  the 
present  work,  therefore,  we  are  sure  of  frequent  temj)tation  to  adopt 
the  historic  estimate,  or  the  personal  estimate,  and  to  forget  the  real 
estimate;  which  latter,  nevertheless,  we  must  employ  if  we  are  to 
make  poetry  yield  us  its  full  benefit.  So  high  is  that  benefit,  the 
benefit  of  clearly  feeling  and  of  deeply  enjoying  the  really  excellent, 
the  truly  classic  in  poetry,  that  we  do  well,  I  say,  to  set  it  fixedly 
before  our  minds  as  our  object  in  studying  poets  and  poetry,  and 
to  make  the  desire  of  attaining  it  the  one  principle  to  which,  as  the 
Imitation  says,  whatever  we  may  read  or  come  to  know,  we  always 
return.  Cum  multa  legeris  et  cognoveris,  ad  uniim  semper  oportet 
redire  principiiim.. 

The  historic  estimate  is  likely  in  especial  to  affect  our  judgment 
and  our  language  when  we  are  dealing  with  ancient  poets ;  the  per- 
sonal estimate  when  we  are  dealing  with  poets  our  contemporaries, 
or  at  any  rate  modern.  The  exaggerations  due  to  the  historic 
estimate  are  not  in  themselves,  perhaps,  of  very  much  gravity. 
Their  report  hardly  enters  the  general  ear;  probably  they  do  not 
always  impose  even  on  the  literary  men  who  adopt  them.  But 
they  lead  to  a  dangerous  abuse  of  language.  So  we  hear  Caedmon, 
amongst  our  own  poets,  compared  to  Milton.  I  have  already 
noticed  the  enthusiasm  of  one  accomplished  French  critic  for 
"historic  origins."  Another  eminent  French  critic,  M.  Vitet, 
comments  upon  that  famous  document  of  the  early  poetry  of  his 
nation,  the  Chanson  de  Roland.  It  is  indeed  a  most  interesting 
document.  The  jocidator  or  jongleur  Taillefer,  who  was  with 
William  the  Conquerer's  army  at  Hastings,  marched  before  the 
Norman  troops,  so  said  the  tradition,  singing  "of  Charlemagne  and 
of  Roland  and  of  Oliver,  and  of  the  vassals  who  died  at  Ronce- 
vaux  " ;  and  it  is  suggested  that  in  the  Chanson  de  Roland  by  one 
Turoldus  or  Theroulde,  a  poem  preserved  in  a  manuscript  of  the 
twelfth  century  in  the  Bodleian  Library  at  Oxford,  we  have  cer- 
tainly the  matter,  perhaps  even  some  of  the  words,  of  the  chant 
which  Taillefer  sang.  The  poem  has  vigour  and  freshness ;  it  is 
not  without  pathos.  But  M.  Vitet  is  not  satisfied  with  seeing  in  it 
a  document  of  some  poetic  value,  and  of  very  high  historic  and  lin- 
guistic value;  he  sees  in  it  a  grand  and  beautiful  work,  a  monu- 
ment of  epic  genius.  In  its  general  design  he  finds  the  grandiose 
conception,  in  its  details  he  finds  the  constant  union  of  simplicity 


THE  STUDY  OF  POETRY  275 

with  greatness,  which  are  the  marks,  he  truly  says,  of  the  genuine 
epic,  and  distinguish  it  from  the  artificial  epic  of  literary  ages.  One 
thinks  of  Homer ;  this  is  the  sort  of  praise  which  is  given  to  Homer, 
and  justly  given.  Higher  praise  there  cannot  well  be,  and  it  is 
the  praise  due  to  epic  poetry  of  the  highest  order  only,  and  to  no 
other.  Let  us  try,  then,  the  Chanson  de  Roland,  at  its  best.  Ro- 
land, mortally  wounded,  lays  himself  down  under  a  pine-tree, 
with  his  face  turned  towards  Spain  and  the  enemy  — 

"De  plusurs  choses  a  remembrer  li  prist, 
De  tantes  teres  cume  libers  cunquist, 
De  duke  France,  des  humes  de  sun  lign, 
De  Carlemagne  sun  seignor  ki  I'nurrit."  * 

That  is  primitive  work,  I  repeat,  with  an  undeniable  poetic  quality 
of  its  own.  It  deserves  such  praise,  and  such  praise  is  sufficient 
for  it.     But  now  turn  to  Homer  — 

*fis  (pcLTO  :   Tovs  5    TJdy]  Kar^x^"  0»'c^foos  ala 
€v  AaKeSaifjiovL  aidi,  0tX7j  ev  waTplSi.  yaly.^ 

We  are  here  in  another  world,  another  order  of  poetrv  altogether; 
here  is  rightly  due  such  supreme  praise  as  that  which  M.  Vitet  gives 
to  the  Chanson  de  Roland.  If  our  words  are  to  have  any  meaning, 
if  our  judgments  are  to  have  any  solidity,  we  must  not  heap  that 
supreme  praise  upon  poetry  of  an  order  immeasurably  inferior. 

Indeed  there  can  be  no  more  useful  help  for  disco\'ering  what 
poetry  belongs  to  the  class  of  the  truly  excellent,  and  can  therefore 
do  us  most  good,  than  to  have  always  in  one's  mind  lines  and  ex- 
pressions of  the  great  masters,  and  to  apply  them  as  a  touchstone 
to  other  poetry.  Of  course  we  are  not  to  require  this  other  poetry 
to  resemble  them ;  it  may  be  very  dissimilar.  But  if  we  have  any 
tact  we  shall  find  them,  when  we  have  lodged  them  well  in  our 
minds,  an  infallible  touchstone  for  detecting  the  presence  or  ab- 
sence of  high  poetic  quality,  and  also  the  degree  of  this  quality,  in 
all  other  poetry  which  we  may  place  beside  them.  Short  passages, 
even  single  lines,  will  serve  our  turn  quite  sufficiently.     Take  the 

'  "Then  began  he  to  call  many  things  to  remembrance,  —  all  the  lands  which 
his  valour  conquered,  and  pleasant  France,  and  the  men  of  his  lineage,  and  Charle- 
magne his  liege  lord  who  nourished  him."  —  Chanson  dc  Roland,  III.  939-942. 
2  "So  said  she;    they  long  since  in  Earth's  soft  arms  were  reposing, 
There,  in  their  own  dear  land,  their  fatherland,  Lacedaemon." 

Iliad,  III.  243,  244  (translated  by  Dr.  Hawtrey). 


276  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

two  lines  which  I  have  just  quoted  from  Homer,  the  poet's  comment 
on  Helen's  mention  of  her  brothers ;  —  or  take  his 

'A  SetXw,  Tt  <T(t)0}C  dSfiev  IlijX^i'  dca/crt 
6vi)Tq.;    Vfxeis  d'  icrrbv  dyrjpii)  t'  aOavdru)  re. 
Tj  'iva  8vffT7]uoicn  /xer    dv5pd(Xtv  dXye'  extjtoc;  ^ 

the  address  of  Zeus  to  the  horses  of  Peleus ;  —  or  take  finally  his 

Kai  (7^,  yipov,  rb  irplv  fxtv  dKovofxev  6\pi.ov  elvai  •  ^ 

the  words  of  Achilles  to  Priam,  a  suppliant  before  him.  Take  that 
incomparable  line  and  a  half  of  Dante,  Ugolino's  tremendous 
words  — 

"  lo  no  piangeva ;   si  dentro  impietrai. 
Piangevan  clli  .  .  ."  ^ 

Take  the  lovely  words  of  Beatrice  to  Virgil  — 

"  lo  son  fatta  da  Dio,  sua  merce,  tale, 
Che  la  vostra  miseria  non  mi  tange, 
Ne  fiarama  d'esto  incendio  non  m'assale  ..."  * 

Take  the  simple,  but  perfect,  single  line  — 

"In  la  sua  volontade  e  nostra  pace."  * 

Take  of  Shakespeare  a  line  or  two  of  Henry  the  Fourth's  expostula- 
tion with  sleep  — 

"Wilt  thou  upon  the  high  and  giddy  mast 
Seal  up  the  ship-boy's  eyes,  and  rock  his  brains 
In  cradle  of  the  rude  imperious  surge  .  .  ." 

and  take,  as  well,  Hamlet's  dying  request  to  Horatio  — 

"  If  thou  didst  ever  hold  me  in  thy  heart, 
Absent  thee  from  felicity  awhile, 
And  in  this  harsh  world  draw  thy  breath  in  pain 
To  tell  my  story  .  .   ." 

*  "Ah,  unhappy  pair,  why  gave  we  you  to  King  Peleus,  to  a  mortal?  but  ye  are 
without  old  age,  and  immortal.  Was  it  that  with  men  born  to  misery  ye  might 
have  sorrow?" — Iliad,  XVI.  443-445. 

2  "Nav,  and  thou  too,  old  man,  in  former  days  wast,  as  we  hear,  happy."  — 
IlMd,  XXIV.  543- 

*  "I  wailed  not,  so  of  stone  grew  I  within; — they  wailed."  — Inferno,  XXXIII. 

39.  40- 

*  "Of  such  sort  hath  God,  thanked  be  His  mercy,  made  me,  that  your  misery 
toucheth  me  not,  neither  doth  the  flame  of  this  fire  strike  me."  —  Inferno,  II.  91-93. 

*  "In  His  will  is  our  peace."  — ■  Faradiso,  III.  85. 


THE  STUDY   OF  POETRY  277 

Take  of  Milton  that  Miltonic  passage  — 

"Darken'd  so,  yet  shone 
Above  them  all  the  archangel ;   but  his  face 
Deep  scars  of  thunder  had  intrench'd,  and  care 
Sat  on  his  faded  cheek  ..." 

add  two  such  hnes  as  — 

"  And  courage  never  to  submit  or  yield 
And  what  is  else  not  to  be  overcome  .  .  ." 

and  finish  with  the  exquisite  close  to  the  loss  of  Proserpine,  the 

loss 

"...  which  cost  Ceres  all  that  pain 
To  seek  her  through  the  world." 

These  few  lines,  if  we  have  tact  and  can  use  them,  are  enough  even 
of  themselves  to  keep  clear  and  sound  our  judgments  about  poetry, 
to  save  us  from  fallacious  estimates  of  it,  to  conduct  us  to  a  real 
estimate. 

The  specimens  I  have  quoted  differ  widely  from  one  another, 
but  they  have  in  common  this :  the  possession  of  the  very  highest 
poetical  quality.  If  we  are  thoroughly  penetrated  by  their  power, 
we  shall  find  that  we  have  acquired  a  sense  enabling  us,  whatever 
poetry  may  be  laid  before  us,  to  feel  the  degree  in  which  a  high 
poetical  quality  is  present  or  wanting  there.  Critics  give  them- 
selves great  labour  to  draw  out  what  in  the  abstract  constitutes  the 
characters  of  a  high  quality  of  poetry.  It  is  much  better  simply  to 
have  recourse  to  concrete  examples ;  —  to  take  specimens  of  poetry 
of  the  high,  the  very  highest  quality,  and  to  say :  The  characters 
of  a  high  quality  of  poetry  are  what  is  expressed  there.  They  are 
far  better  recognized  by  being  felt  in  the  verse  of  the  master,  than 
by  being  perused  in  the  prose  of  the  critic.  Nevertheless  if  we  are 
urgently  pressed  to  give  some  critical  account  of  them,  we  may 
safely,  perhaps,  venture  on  laying  down,  not  indeed  how  and  why 
the  characters  arise,  but  where  and  in  what  they  arise.  They  are 
in  the  matter  and  substance  of  the  poetry,  and  they  are  in  its  man- 
ner and  style.  Both  of  these,  the  substance  and  matter  on  the 
one  hand,  the  style  and  manner  on  the  other,  have  a  mark,  an  ac- 
cent, of  high  beauty,  worth,  and  power.  But  if  we  are  asked  to 
define  this  mark  and  accent  in  the  abstract,  our  answer  must  be: 
No,  for  we  should  thereby  be  darkening  the  question,  not  clearing 


278  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

it.  The  mark  and  accent  are  as  given  by  the  substance  and  matter 
of  that  poetry,  by  the  style  and  manner  of  that  poetry,  and  of  all 
other  poetry  which  is  akin  to  it  in  quality. 

Only  one  thing  we  may  add  as  to  the  substance  and  matter  of  poe- 
try, guiding  ourselves  by  Aristotle's  profound  observation  that  the 
superiority  of  poetry  over  history  consists  in  its  possessing  a  higher 
truth  and  a  higher  seriousness  ((^iAoo-o^wtc/ooi/  koL  airovSaLOTepov). 
Let  us  add,  therefore,  to  what  we  have  said,  this :  that  the  substance 
and  matter  of  the  best  poetry  acquire  their  special  character  from 
possessing,  in  an  eminent  degree,  truth  and  seriousness.  We  may 
add  yet  further,  what  is  in  itself  evident,  that  to  the  style  and  man- 
ner of  the  best  poetry  their  special  character,  their  accent,  is  given 
by  their  diction,  and,  even  yet  more,  by  their  movement.  And 
though  we  distinguish  between  the  two  characters,  the  two  accents, 
of  superiority,  yet  they  are  nevertheless  vitally  connected  one  with 
the  other.  The  superior  character  of  truth  and  seriousness,  in  the 
matter  and  substance  of  the  best  poetry,  is  inseparable  from  the 
superiority  of  diction  and  movement  marking  its  style  and  manner. 
The  two  superiorities  are  closely  related,  and  are  in  steadfast  pro- 
portion one  to  the  other.  So  far  as  high  poetic  truth  and  serious- 
ness are  wanting  to  a  poet's  matter  and  substance,  so  far  also,  we 
may  be  sure,  will  a  high  poetic  stamp  of  diction  and  movement  be 
wanting  to  his  style  and  manner.  In  proportion  as  this  high 
stamp  of  diction  and  movement,  again,  is  absent  from  a  poet's 
style  and  manner,  we  shall  find,  also,  that  high  poetic  truth  and 
seriousness  are  absent  from  his  substance  and  matter. 

So  stated,  these  are  but  dry  general  ties;  their  whole  force  lies 
in  their  application.  And  I  could  wish  every  student  of  poetry  to 
make  the  application  of  them  for  himself.  Made  by  himself,  the 
application  would  impress  itself  upon  his  mind  far  more  deeply 
than  made  by  m^.  Neither  will  my  limits  allow  me  to  make  any 
full  application  of  the  generalities  above  propounded;  but  in  the 
hope  of  bringing  out,  at  any  rate,  some  significance  in  them,  and  of 
establishing  an  important  principle  more  firmly  by  their  means, 
I  will,  in  the  space  which  remains  to  me,  follow  rapidly  from  the 
commencement  the  course  of  our  English  poetry  with  them  in  my 
view. 

Once  more  I  return  to  the  early  poetry  of  France,  with  which 
our  own  poetry,  in  its  origins,  is  indissolubly  connected.  In  the 
twelfth  anfl  thirteenth  centuries,  that  seed-time  of  all  modern  lan- 
guage and  literature,  the  poetry  of  France  had  a  clear  predominance 


THE  STUDY  OF  POETRY  279 

in  Europe.  Of  the  two  divisions  of  that  poetry,  its  productions  in 
the  langne  d'oil  and  its  productions  in  the  langiie  d'oc,  the  poetry 
of  the  langiie  d'oc,  of  southern  France,  or  the  troubadours,  is  of 
importance  because  of  its  effect  on  Italian  hterature ;  —  the  first 
literature  of  modern  Europe  to  strike  the  true  and  grand  note,  and 
to  bring  forth,  as  in  Dante  and  Petrarch  it  brought  forth,  classics. 
But  the  predominance  of  French  poetry  in  Europe,  during  the 
twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries,  is  due  to  its  poetry  of  the  langue 
d'oil,  the  poetry  of  northern  France  and  of  the  tongue  which  is 
now  the  French  language.  In  the  twelfth  century  the  bloom  of 
this  romance-poetry  was  earlier  and  stronger  in  England,  at  the 
court  of  our  Anglo-Norman  kings,  than  in  France  itself.  But  it 
was  a  bloom  of  French  poetry;  and  as  our  native  poetry  formed 
itself,  it  formed  itself  out  of  this.  The  romance-poems  which  took 
possession  of  the  heart  and  imagination  of  Europe  in  the  twelfth 
and  thirteenth  centuries  are  French;  "they  are,"  as  Southey  justly 
says,  "the  pride  of  French  literature,  nor  have  we  anything  which 
can  be  placed  in  competition  with  them."  Themes  were  supplied 
from  all  quarters ;  but  the  romance-setting  which  was  common  to 
them  all,  and  which  gained  the  ear  of  Europe,  was  French.  This 
constituted  for  the  French  poetry,  literature,  and  language,  at  the 
height  of  the  Middle  Age,  an  unchallenged  predominance.  The 
Italian  Brunetto  Latini,  the  master  of  Dante,  wrote  his  Treasure 
in  French  because,  he  says,  "la  parleure  en  est  plus  delitable  et 
plus  commune  a  toutes  gens."  '  In  the  same  century,  the  thir- 
teenth, the  French  romance-writer.  Christian  of  Troyes,  formulates 
the  claims,  in  chivalry  and  letters,  of  France,  his  native  country, 
as  follows :  — 

"Or  vous  ert  par  ce  livre  apris, 
Que  Gresse  ot  de  chevalerie 
Le  premier  los  et  de  clergie ; 
Puis  vint  chevalerie  a  Rome, 
Et  de  la  clergie  la  some, 
Qui  ore  est  en  France  venue. 
Diex  doinst  qu'ele  i  soit  retenue, 
Et  que  li  lius  li  abelisse 
Tant  que  de  France  n'isse 
L'onor  qui  s'i  est  arestee  !" 

"Now  by  this  book  you  will  learn  that  first  Greece  had  the  re- 
nown for  chivalry  and  letters:   then  chivalry  and  the  primacy  in 

*  [Converse  in  it  is  more  pleasing  to  everybody  and  also  more  usual.] 


28o  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

letters  passed  to  Rome,  and  now  it  is  come  to  France.  God  grant 
it  may  be  kept  there;  and  that  the  place  may  please  it  so  well,  that 
the  honour  which  has  come  to  make  stay  in  France  may  never 
depart  thence ! " 

Yet  it  is  now  all  gone,  this  French  romance-poetry,  of  which  the 
weight  of  substance  and  the  power  of  style  are  not  unfairly  repre- 
sented by  this  extract  from  Christian  of  Troyes.  Only  by  means 
of  the  historic  estimate  can  we  persuade  ourselves  now  to  think 
that  any  of  it  is  of  poetical  importance. 

But  in  the  fourteenth  century  there  comes  an  Englishman  nour- 
ished on  this  poetry,  taught  his  trade  by  this  poetry,  getting  words, 
rhyme,  metre  from  this  poetry;  for  even  of  that  stanza  which  the 
Italians  used,  and  which  Chaucer  derived  immediately  from  the 
Italians,  the  basis  and  suggestion  was  probably  given  in  France. 
Chaucer  (I  have  already  named  him)  fascinated  his  contemporaries, 
but  so  too  did  Christian  of  Troyes  and  Wolfram  of  Eschenbach. 
Chaucer's  power  of  fascination,  however,  is  enduring ;  his  poetical 
importance  does  not  need  the  assistance  of  the  historic  estimate; 
it  is  real.  He  is  a  genuine  source  of  joy  and  strength,  which  is 
flowing  still  for  us  and  will  flow  always.  He  will  be  read,  as  time 
goes  on,  far  more  generally  than  he  is  read  now.  His  language  is 
a  cause  of  difficulty  for  us;  but  so  also,  and  I  think  in  quite  as 
great  a  degree,  is  the  language  of  Burns.  In  Chaucer's  case,  as  in 
that  of  Burns,  it  is  a  difficulty  to  be  unhesitatingly  accepted  and 
overcome. 

If  we  ask  ourselves  wherein  consists  the  immense  superiority  of 
Chaucer's  poetry  over  the  romance-poetry  —  why  it  is  that  in  pass- 
ing from  this  to  Chaucer  we  suddenly  feel  ourselves  to  be  in  another 
world,  we  shall  find  that  his  superiority  is  both  in  the  substance  of 
his  poetry  and  in  the  style  of  his  poetry.  His  superiority  in  sub- 
stance is  given  by  his  large,  free,  simple,  clear  yet  kindly  view  of 
human  life,  —  so  unlike  the  total  want,  in  the  romance-poets, 
of  all  intelligent  command  of  it.  Chaucer  has  not  their  helpless- 
ness ;  he  has  gained  the  power  to  survey  the  world  from  a  central, 
a  truly  human  point  of  view.  We  have  only  to  call  to  mind  the 
Prologue  to  The  Canterbury  Tales.  The  right  comment  upon  it  is 
Dryden's:  "  It  is  sufficient  to  say,  according  to  the  proverb,  that 
here  is  God's  plenty. "  And  again  :  "  He  is  a  perpetual  fountain  of 
good  sense."  It  is  by  a  large,  free,  sound  representation  of  things, 
that  poetry,  this  high  criticism  of  life,  has  truth  of  substance;  and 
Chaucer's  poetry  has  truth  of  substance. 


THE  STUDY   OF  POETRY  281 

Of  his  style  and  manner,  if  we  think  first  of  the  romance-poetry 
and  then  of  Chaucer's  divine  Hquidness  of  diction,  his  divine  flu- 
idity of  movement,  it  is  difficuk  to  speak  temperately.  They  are 
irresistible,  and  justify  all  the  rapture  with  which  his  successors 
speak  of  his  "gold  dewdrops  of  speech."  Johnson  misses  the  point 
entirely  when  he  finds  fault  with  Dryden  for  ascribing  to  Chaucer 
the  first  refinement  of  our  numbers,  and  says  that  Gower  also  can 
show  smooth  numbers  and  easy  rhymes.  The  refinement  of  our 
numbers  means  something  far  more  than  this.  A  nation  may  have 
versifiers  with  smooth  numbers  and  easy  rhymes,  and  yet  may 
have  no  real  poetry  at  all.  Chaucer  is  the  father  of  our  splendid 
English  poetry;  he  is  our  "well  of  English  undefiled,"  because 
by  the  lovely  charm  of  his  diction,  the  lovely  charm  of  his  move- 
ment, he  makes  an  epoch  and  founds  a  tradition.  In  Spenser, 
Shakespeare,  Milton,  Keats,  we  can  follow  the  tradition  of  the  liquid 
diction,  the  fluid  movement,  of  Chaucer;  at  one  time  it  is  his  liquid 
diction  of  which  in  these  poets  we  feel  the  virtue,  and  at  another 
time  it  is  his  fluid  movement.     And  the  virtue  is  irresistible. 

Bounded  as  is  my  space,  I  must  yet  find  room  for  an  example  of 
Chaucer's  virtue,  as  I  have  given  examples  to  show  the  virtue  of  the 
great  classics.  I  feel  disposed  to  say  that  a  single  line  is  enough 
to  show  the  charm  of  Chaucer's  verse;    that  merely  one  line  like 

this  — 

"O  martyr  souded  '  in  virginitee  !" 

has  a  virtue  of  manner  and  movement  such  as  we  shall  not  find  in 
all  the  verse  of  romance-poetry ;  —  but  this  is  saying  nothing.  The 
virtue  is  such  as  we  shall  not  find,  perhaps,  in  all  English  poetry, 
outside  the  poets  whom  I  have  named  as  the  special  inheritors  of 
Chaucer's  tradition.  A  single  line,  however,  is  too  little  if  we  have 
not  the  strain  of  Chaucer's  verse  well  in  our  memory ;  let  us  take 
a  stanza.  It  is  from  The  Prioress's  Tale,  the  story  of  the  Chris- 
tian child  murdered  in  a  Jewry  — 

"  My  throte  is  cut  unto  my  nekke-bone 
Saide  this  child,  and  as  by  way  of  kinde 
I  should  have  deyd,  yea,  longe  time  agone ; 
But  Jesu  Christ,  as  ye  in  bookes  finde, 
Will  that  his  glory  last  and  be  in  minde, 
And  for  the  worship  of  his  mother  dere 
Yet  may  I  sing  O  Alma  loud  and  clere." 

•The  French  sonde;   soldered,  Sxed  fast. 


282  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

Wordsworth  has  modernized  this  Tale,  and  to  feel  how  delicate  and 
evanescent  is  the  charm  of  verse,  we  have  only  to  read  Words- 
worth's first  three  lines  of  this  stanza  after  Chaucer's  — 

"  My  throat  is  cut  unto  the  bone,  I  trow 
Said  this  young  child,  and  by  the  law  of  kind 
I  should  have  died,  yea,  many  hours  ago." 

The  charm  is  departed.  It  is  often  said  that  the  power  of  liquid- 
ness  and  fluidity  in  Chaucer's  verse  was  dependent  upon  a  free, 
a  licentious  dealing  with  language,  such  as  is  now  impossible;  upon 
a  liberty,  such  as  Burns  too  enjoyed,  of  making  words  like  neck, 
bird,  into  a  dissyllable  by  adding  to  them,  and  words  like  cause, 
rhyme,  into  a  dissyllable  by  sounding  the  e  mute.  It  is  true  that 
Chaucer's  fluidity  is  conjoined  with  this  liberty,  and  is  admirably 
served  by  it ;  but  we  ought  not  to  say  that  it  was  dependent  upon  it. 
It  was  dependent  upon  his  talent.  Other  poets  with  a  like  liberty 
do  not  attain  to  the  fluidity  of  Chaucer;  Burns  himself  does  not 
attain  to  it.  Poets,  again,  who  have  a  talent  akin  to  Chaucer's, 
such  as  Shakespeare  or  Keats,  have  known  how  to  attain  to  his 
fluidity  without  the  like  liberty. 

And  yet  Chaucer  is  not  one  of  the  great  classics.  His  poetry 
transcends  and  effaces,  easily  and  without  effort,  all  the  romance- 
poetry  of  Catholic  Christendom;  it  transcends  and  effaces  all  the 
English  poetry  contemporary  with  it,  it  transcends  and  effaces  all 
the  English  poetry  subsequent  to  it  down  to  the  age  of  Elizabeth. 
Of  such  avail  is  poetic  truth  of  substance,  in  its  natural  and  neces- 
sary union  with  poetic  truth  of  style.  And  yet,  I  say,  Chaucer  is 
not  one  of  the  great  classics.  He  has  not  their  accent.  What  is 
wanting  to  him  is  suggested  by  the  mere  mention  of  the  name  of  the 
first  great  classic  of  Christendom,  the  immortal  poet  who  died 
eighty  years  before  Chaucer,  —  Dante.     The  accent  of  such  verse  as 

"In  la  sua  volontade  e  nostra  pace  .  .  ." 

is  altogether  beyond  Chaucer's  reach;  we  praise  him,  but  we  feel 
that  this  accent  is  out  of  the  question  for  him.  It  may  be  said 
that  it  was  necessarily  out  of  the  reach  of  any  poet  in  the  England 
of  that  stage  of  growth.  Possibly;  but  we  are  to  adopt  a  real,  not 
a  historic,  estimate  of  poetry.  However  we  may  account  for  its 
absence, something  is  wanting, then,  to  the  poetryof  Chaucer,  whic  h 
poetry  must  have  before  it  can  be  placed  in  the  glorious  class  of  the 
best.     And  there  is  no  doubt  what  that  something  is.     It  is  the 


THE  STUDY  OF  POETRY  283 

cTTrovSaidri^s,  the  high  and  excellent  seriousness,  which  Aristotle 
assigns  as  one  of  the  grand  virtues  of  poetry.  The  substance 
of  Chaucer's  poetry,  his  view  of  things  and  his  criticism  of  life,  has 
largeness,  freedom,  shrewdness,  benignity;  but  it  has  not  this  high 
seriousness.  Homer's  criticism  of  life  has  it,  Dante's  has  it,  Shake- 
speare's has  it.  It  is  this  chiefly  which  gives  to  our  spirits  what  they 
can  rest  upon;  and  with  the  increasing  demands  of  our  modern 
ages  upon  poetry,  this  virtue  of  giving  us  what  we  can  rest  upon  will 
be  more  and  more  highly  esteemed.  A  voice  from  the  slums  of 
Paris,  fifty  or  sixty  years  after  Chaucer,  the  voice  of  poor  Villon 
out  of  his  life  of  riot  and  crime,  has  at  its  happy  moments  (as,  for 
instance,  in  the  last  stanza  of  La  Belle  Heaidmiere  ^)  more  of  this 
important  poetic  virtue  of  seriousness  than  all  the  productions  of 
Chaucer.  But  its  apparition  in  Villon,  and  in  men  like  Villon, 
is  fitful ;  the  greatness  of  the  great  poets,  the  power  of  their  criti- 
cism of  hfe,  is  that  their  virtue  is  sustained. 

To  our  praise,  therefore,  of  Chaucer  as  a  poet  there  must  be 
this  limitation;  he  lacks  the  high  seriousness  of  the  great  classics, 
and  therewith  an  important  part  of  their  virtue.  Still,  the  main 
fact  for  us  to  bear  in  mind  about  Chaucer  is  his  sterling  value 
according  to  that  real  estimate  which  we  firmly  adopt  for  all 
poets.  He  has  poetic  truth  of  substance,  though  he  has  not  high 
poetic  seriousness,  and  corresponding  to  his  truth  of  substance 
he  has  an  exquisite  virtue  of  style  and  manner.  With  him  is 
born  our  real  poetry. 

For  my  present  purpose  I  need  not  dwell  on  our  Elizabethan 
poetry,  or  on  the  continuation  and  close  of  this  poetry  in  Milton. 
We  all  of  us  profess  to  be  agreed  in  the  estimate  of  this  poetry; 
we  all  of  us  recognize  it  as  great  poetry,  our  greatest,  and  Shake- 

*  The  name  Heaiilimi'ere  is  said  to  be  derived  from  a  headdress  (helm)  worn  as 
a  mark  by  courtesans.  In  Villon's  ballad,  a  poor  old  creature  of  this  class  laments 
her  days  of  youth  and  beauty.     The  last  stanza  of  the  ballad  runs  thus :  — 

"Ainsi  le  bon  temps  regretons 
Entre  nous,  pauvres  vieilles  sottes, 
Assises  bas,  a  croppetons, 
Tout  en  ung  tas  comme  pelottes; 
A  petit  feu  de  chenevottes 
Tost  allumees,  to§t  estainctes. 
Et  jadis  fusmes  si  mignottes ! 
Ainsi  en  prend  a  maintz  et  maintes." 

"Thus  amongst  ourselves  we  regret  the  good  time,  poor  silly  old  things,  low- 
seated  on  our  heels,  all  in  a  heap  like  so  many  balls;  by  a  little  fire  of  hemp- 
stalks,  soon  lighted,  soon  spent.  And  once  we  were  such  darlings !  So  fares  it 
with  many  and  many  a  one." 


284  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

speare  and  Milton  as  our  poetical  classics.  The  real  estimate, 
here,  has  universal  currency.  With  the  next  age  of  our  poetry 
divergency  and  difficulty  begin.  An  historic  estimate  of  that 
poetry  has  established  itself;  and  the  question  is,  whether  it  will 
be  found  to  coincide  with  the  real  estimate. 

The  age  of  Dryden,  together  with  our  whole  eighteenth  cen- 
tury which  followed  it,  sincerely  believed  itself  to  have  produced 
poetical  classics  of  its  own,  and  even  to  have  made  advance,  in 
poetry,  beyond  all  its  predecessors.  Dryden  regards  as  not 
seriously  disputable  the  opinion  "that  the  sweetness  of  English 
verse  was  never  understood  or  practised  by  our  fathers."  Cowley 
could  see  nothing  at  all  in  Chaucer's  poetry.  Dryden  heartily 
admired  it,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  praised  its  matter  admirably; 
but  of  its  exquisite  manner  and  movement  all  he  can  find  to  say 
is  that  "there  is  the  rude  sweetness  of  a  Scotch  tune  in  it,  which 
is  natural  and  pleasing,  though  not  perfect."  Addison,  wishing 
to  praise  Chaucer's  numbers,  compares  them  with  Dryden's 
own.  And  all  through  the  eighteenth  century,  and  down  even 
into  our  own  times,  the  stereotyped  phrase  of  approbation  for 
good  verse  found  in  our  early  poetry  has  been,  that  it  even  ap- 
proached the  verse  of  Dryden,  Addison,  Pope,  and  Johnson. 

Are  Dryden  and  Pope  poetical  classics?  Is  the  historic  esti- 
mate, which  represents  them  as  such,  and  which  has  been  so 
long  established  that  it  cannot  easily  give  way,  the  real  estimate  ? 
Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  as  is  well  known,  denied  it;  but  the 
authority  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  does  not  weigh  much 
with  the  young  generation,  and  there  are  many  signs  to  show 
that  the  eighteenth  century  and  its  judgments  are  coming  into 
favour  again.  Are  the  favourite  poets  of  the  eighteenth  century 
classics  ? 

It  is  impossible  within  my  present  limits  to  discuss  the  question 
fully.  And  what  man  of  letters  would  not  shrink  from  seeming 
to  dispose  dictatorially  of  the  claims  of  two  men  who  are,  at  any 
rate,  such  masters  in  letters  as  Dryden  and  Pope;  two  men  of 
such  admirable  talent,  both  of  them,  and  one  of  them,  Dryden, 
a  man,  on  all  sides,  of  such  energetic  and  genial  power?  And 
yet,  if  we  are  to  gain  the  full  benefit  from  poetry,  we  must  have 
"the  real  estimate  of  it.  I  cast  about  for  some  mode  of  arriving, 
in  the  present  case,  at  such  an  estimate  without  offence.  And 
perhaps  the  best  way  is  to  begin,  as  it  is  easy  to  begin,  with  cordial 
praise. 


THE  STUDY   OF  POETRY  285 

When  we  find  Chapman,  the  Elizabethan  translator  of  Homer, 
expressing  himself  in  his  preface  thus:  "Though  truth  in  her  very 
nakedness  sits  in  so  deep  a  pit,  that  from  Gades  to  Aurora  and 
Ganges  few  eyes  can  sound  her,  I  hope  yet  those  few  here  will  so 
discover  and  confirm  that,  the  date  being  out  of  her  darkness 
in  this  morning  of  our  poet,  he  shall  now  gird  his  temples  with 
the  sun,"  —  we  pronounce  that  such  a  prose  is  intolerable.  When 
we  find  Milton  writing:  "And  long  it  was  not  after,  when  I  was 
confirmed  in  this  opinion,  that  he,  who  would  not  be  frustrate 
of  his  hope  to  write  well  hereafter  in  laudable  things,  ought  him- 
self to  be  a  true  poem,"  — we  pronounce  that  such  a  prose  has 
its  own  grandeur,  but  that  it  is  obsolete  and  inconvenient.  But 
when  we  find  Dryden  telling  us :  "What  Virgil  wrote  in  the  vigour 
of  his  age,  in  plenty  and  at  ease,  I  have  undertaken  to  translate 
in  my  declining  years;  struggling  with  wants,  oppressed  with 
sickness,  curbed  in  my  genius,  liable  to  be  misconstrued  in  all  I 
write,"  —  then  we  exclaim  that  here  at  last  we  have  the  true 
English  prose,  a  prose  such  as  we  would  all  gladly  use  if  we  only 
knew  how.     Yet  Dryden  was  Alilton's  contemporary. 

But  after  the  Restoration  the  time  had  come  when  our  nation 
felt  the  imperious  need  of  a  fit  prose.  So,  too,  the  time  had  like- 
wise come  when  our  nation  felt  the  imperious  need  of  freeing 
itself  from  the  absorbing  preoccupation  which  religion  in  the 
Puritan  age  had  exercised.  It  was  impossible  that  this  freedom 
should  be  brought  about  without  some  negative  excess,  without 
some  neglect  and  impairment  of  the  religious  life  of  the  soul;  and 
the  spiritual  history  of  the  eighteenth  century  shows  us  that  the 
freedom  was  not  achieved  without  them.  Still,  the  freedom  was 
achieved;  the  preoccupation,  an  undoubtedly  baneful  and  retard- 
ing one  if  it  had  continued,  was  got  rid  of.  And  as  with  religion 
amongst  us  at  that  period,  so  it  was  also  with  letters.  A  fit  prose 
was  a  necessity;  but  it  was  impossible  that  a  fit  prose  should 
establish  itself  amongst  us  without  some  touch  of  frost  to  the 
imaginative  life  of  the  soul.  The  needful  qualities  for  a  fit  prose 
are  regularity,  uniformity,  precision,  balance.  The  men  of  letters, 
whose  destiny  it  may  be  to  bring  their  nation  to  the  attainment 
of  a  fit  prosej  must  of  necessity,  whether  they  work  in  prose  or  in 
verse,  give  a  predominating,  an  almost  exclusive  attention  to  the 
qualities  of  regularity,  uniformity,  precision,  balance.  But  an 
almost  exclusive  attention  to  these  qualities  involves  some  repres- 
sion and  silencing  of  poetry. 


286  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

We  are  to  regard  Dryden  as  the  puissant  and  glorious  founder, 
Pope  as  the  splendid  high  priest,  of  our  age  of  prose  and  reason, 
of  our  excellent  and  indispensable  eighteenth  century.  For  the 
purposes  of  their  mission  and  destiny  their  poetry,  like  their  prose, 
is  admirable.  Do  you  ask  me  whether  Dryden's  verse,  take  it 
almost  where  you  will,  is  not  good  ? 

"  A  milk-white  Hind,  immortal  and  unchanged, 
Fed  on  the  lawns  and  in  the  forest  ranged." 

I  answer:  Admirable  for  the  purposes  of  the  inaugurator  of  an 
age  of  prose  and  reason.  Do  you  ask  me  whether  Pope's  verse, 
take  it  almost  where  you  will,  is  not  good? 

"  To  Hounslow  Heath  I  point,  and  Banstead  Down ; 
Thence  comes  your  mutton,  and  these  chicks  my  own." 

I  answer:  Admirable  for  the  purposes  of  the  high  priest  of  an 
age  of  prose  and  reason.  But  do  you  ask  me  whether  such  verse 
proceeds  from  men  with  an  adequate  poetic  criticism  of  life,  from 
men  whose  criticism  of  life  has  a  high  seriousness,  or  even,  with- 
out that  high  seriousness,  has  poetic  largeness,  freedom,  insight, 
benignity?  Do  you  ask  me  whether  the  application  of  ideas 
to  life  in  the  verse  of  these  men,  often  a  powerful  application,  no 
doubt,  is  a  powerful  poetic  application  ?  Do  you  ask  me  whether 
the  poetry  of  these  men  has  either  the  matter  or  the  inseparable 
manner  of  such  an  adequate  poetic  criticism;  whether  it  has  the 
accent  of 

"Absent  thee  from  felicity  awhile  .  .  ." 
or  of 

or  of 


"  And  what  is  else  not  to  be  overcome 
"O  martyr  souded  in  virginitee!" 


I  answer:  It  has  not  and  cannot  have  them;  it  is  the  poetry  of 
the  builders  of  an  age  of  prose  and  reason.  Though  they  may 
write  in  verse,  though  they  may  in  a  certain  sense  be  masters  of 
the  art  of  versification,  Dryden  and  Pope  are  not  classics  of  our 
poetry,  they  are  classics  of  our  prose. 

Gray  is  our  poetical  classic  of  that  literature  and  age;  the 
position  of  (iray  is  singular,  and  demands  a  word  of  notice  here. 
He  has  not  the  volume  or  the  power  of  poets  who,  coming  in  times 


THE  STUDY    OF  POETRY  287 

more  favourable,  have  attained  to  an  independent  criticism  of 
life.  But  he  lived  with  great  poets,  he  lived,  above  all,  with  the 
Greeks,  through  perpetually  studying  and  enjoying  them;  and 
he  caught  their  poetic  point  of  view  for  regarding  life,  caught 
their  poetic  manner.  The  point  of  view  and  the  manner  are  not 
self-sprung  in  him,  he  caught  them  of  others ;  and  he  had  not  the 
free  and  abundant  use  of  them.  But  whereas  Addison  and  Pope 
never  had  the  use  of  them,  Gray  had  the  use  of  them  at  times. 
He  is  the  scantiest  and  frailest  of  classics  in  our  poetry,  but  he 
is  a  classic. 

And  now,  after  Gray,  we  are  met,  as  we  draw  towards  the  end 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  we  are  met  by  the  great  name  of  Burns. 
We  enter  now  on  times  where  the  personal  estimate  of  poets  begins 
to  be  rife,  and  where  the  real  estimate  of  them  is  not  reached 
without  difficulty.  But  in  spite  of  the  disturbing  pressure  of 
personal  partiality,  of  national  partiality,  let  us  try  to  reach  a 
real  estimate  of  the  poetry  of  Burns. 

By  his  English  poetry  Burns  in  general  belongs  to  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  has  little  importance  for  us. 

"Mark  ruffian  Violence,  distain'd  with  crimes, 
Rousing  elate  in  these  degenerate  times; 
View  unsuspecting  Innocence  a  prey, 
As  guileful  Fraud  points  out  the  erring  way; 
While  subtile  Litigation's  pliant  tongue 
The  life-blood  equal  sucks  of  Right  and  Wrong!" 

Evidently  this  is  not  the  real  Burns,  or  his  name  and  fame  would 
have  disappeared  long  ago.  Nor  is  Clarinda's  love-poet,  Syl- 
vander,  the  real  Burns  either.  But  he  tells  us  himself:  "These 
English  songs  gravel  me  to  death.  I  have  not  the  command  of 
the  language  that  I  have  of  my  native  tongue.  In  fact,  I  think 
that  my  ideas  are  more  barren  in  English  than  in  Scotch.  I  have 
been  at  Duncan  Gray  to  dress  it  in  English,  but  all  I  can  do  is 
desperately  stupid."  We  English  turn  naturally,  in  Burns,  to 
the  poems  in  our  own  language,  because  we  can  read  them  easily; 
but  in  those  poems  we  have  not  the  real  Burns. 

The  real  Burns  is  of  course  in  his  Scotch  poems.  Let  us  boldly 
say  that  of  much  of  this  poetry,  a  poetry  dealing  perpetually  with 
Scotch  drink,  Scotch  religion,  and  Scotch  manners,  a  Scotch- 
man's estimate  is  apt  to  be  personal.  A  Scotchman  is  used  to 
this  world  of  Scotch  drink,  Scotch  religion,  and  Scotch  manners; 


288  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

he  has  a  tenderness  for  it;  he  meets  its  poet  halfway.  In  this 
tender  mood  he  reads  pieces  like  the  Holy  Fair  or  Halloween. 
But  this  world  of  Scotch  drink,  Scotch  religion,  and  Scotch  manners 
is  against  a  poet,  not  for  him,  when  it  is  not  a  partial  countryman 
who  reads  him;  for  in  itself  it  is  not  a  beautiful  world,  and  no 
one  can  deny  that  it  is  of  advantage  to  a  poet  to  deal  with  a  beauti- 
ful world.  Burns's  world  of  Scotch  drink,  Scotch  religion,  and 
Scotch  manners,  is  often  a  harsh,  a  sordid,  a  repulsive  world; 
even  the  world  of  his  Cotter's  Saturday  Night  is  not  a  beautiful 
world.  No  doubt  a  poet's  criticism  of  life  may  have  such  truth 
and  power  that  it  triumphs  over  its  world  and  delights  us.  Burns 
may  triumph  over  his  world,  often  he  does  triumph  over  his  world, 
but  let  us  observe  how  and  where.  Burns  is  the  first  case  we 
have  had  where  the  bias  of  the  personal  estimate  tends  to  mislead; 
let  us  look  at  him  closely,  he  can  bear  it. 

Many  of  his  admirers  will  tell  us  that  we  have  Burns,  convivial, 
genuine,  delightful,  here  — 

"  Leeze  me  on  drink  !   it  gies  us  mair 
Than  either  school  or  college ; 
It  kindles  wit,  it  waukens  lair, 

It  pangs  us  fou  o'  knowledge. 
Be't  whisky  gill  or  penny  wheep 

Or  ony  stronger  potion, 
It  never  fails,  on  drinking  deep, 
To  kittle  up  our  notion 

By  night  or  day." 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  that  sort  of  thing  in  Burns,  and  it  is  un- 
satisfactory, not  because  it  is  bacchanalian  poetry,  but  because 
it  has  not  that  accent  of  sincerity  which  bacchanalian  poetry, 
to  do  it  justice,  very  often  has.  There  is  something  in  it  of  bra- 
vado, something  which  makes  us  feel  that  we  have  not  the  man 
speaking  to  us  with  his  real  voice ;  something,  therefore,  poetically 
unsound. 

With  still  more  confidence  will  his  admirers  tell  us  that  we  have 
the  genuine  Burns,  the  great  poet,  when  his  strain  asserts  the 
independence,  equality,  dignity,  of  men,  as  in  the  famous  song 
For  a'  that  and  a'  that  — 

"A  prince  can  mak'  a  belted  knight, 
A  marquis,  duke,  and  a'  that ; 
But  an  honest  man's  ahoon  his  might, 
Guid  faith  he  mauna  fa'  that ! 


THE  STUDY   OF  POETRY  289 

For  a'  that,  and  a'  that, 

Their  dignities,  and  a'  that, 
The  pith  o'  sense,  and  pride  o'  worth, 

Are  higher  rank  than  a'  that." 

Here  they  find  his  grand,  genuine  touches;  and  still  more,  when 
this  puissant  genius,  who  so  often  set  morality  at  defiance,  falls 
moralizing  — 

"The  sacred  lowe  o'  weel-placed  love 

Luxuriantly  indulge  it; 
But  never  tempt  th'  illicit  rove, 

Tho'  naething  should  divulge  it. 
I  waive  the  quantum  o'  the  sin, 

The  hazard  o'  concealing, 
But  och  !    it  hardens  a'  within, 

And  petrifies  the  feeling." 

or  in  a  higher  strain  — 

"Who  made  the  heart,  'tis  He  alone 

Decidedly  can  try  us ; 
He  knows  each  chord,  its  various  tone; 

Each  spring,  its  various  bias. 
Then  at  the  balance  let's  be  mute. 

We  never  can  adjust  it; 
What's  done  we  partly  may  compute, 

But  know  not  what's  resisted." 

Or  in  a  better  strain  yet,  a  strain,  his  admirers  will  say,  unsur- 
passable — 

"To  make  a  happy  fire-side  clime 
To  weans  and  wife. 
That's  the  true  pathos  and  sublime 
Of  human  life." 

There  is  criticism  of  life  for  you,  the  admirers  of  Burns  will  say 
to  us ;  there  is  the  application  of  ideas  to  life !  There  is,  un- 
doubtedly. The  doctrine  of  the  last  quoted  lines  coincides  almost 
exactly  with  what  was  the  aim  and  end,  Xenophon  tells  us,  of  all 
the  teaching  of  Socrates.  And  the  application  is  a  powerful  one; 
made  by  a  man  of  vigorous  understanding,  and  (need  I  say?)  a 
master  of  language. 

But  for  supreme  poetical  success  more  is  required  than  the 
powerful  application  of  ideas  to  life;    it  must  be  an  application 
under  the  conditions  fixed  by  the  laws  of  poetic  truth  and  poetic 
u 


290  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

beauty.  Those  laws  fix  as  an  essential  condition,  in  the  poet's 
treatment  of  such  matters  as  are  here  in  question,  high  seriousness; 
—  the  high  seriousness  which  comes  from  absolute  sincerity. 
The  accent  of  high  seriousness,  born  of  absolute  sincerity,  is 
what  gives  to  such  verse  as 

"In  la  sua  volontade  h  nostra  pace  .  .  ." 

to  such  criticism  of  life  as  Dante's,  its  power.  Is  this  accent  felt 
in  the  passages  which  I  have  been  quoting  from  Burns?  Surely 
not;  surely,  if  our  sense  is  quick,  we  must  perceive  that  we  have 
not  in  those  passages  a  voice  from  the  very  inmost  soul  of  the 
genuine  Burns;  he  is  not  speaking  to  us  from  these  depths,  he 
is  more  or  less  preaching.  And  the  compensation  for  admiring 
such  passages  less,  from  missing  the  perfect  poetic  accent  in  them, 
will  be  that  we  shall  admire  more  the  poetry  where  that  accent 
is  found. 

No;  Burns,  like  Chaucer,  comes  short  of  the  high  seriousness 
of  the  great  classics,  and  the  virtue  of  matter  and  manner  which 
goes  with  that  high  seriousness  is  wanting  to  his  work.  At  mo- 
ments he  touches  it  in  a  profound  and  passionate  melancholy, 
as  in  those  four  immortal  lines  taken  by  Byron  as  a  motto  for 
The  Bride  of  Abydos,  but  which  have  in  them  a  depth  of  poetic 
quality  such  as  resides  in  no  verse  of  Byron's  own  — 

"Had  we  never  loved  sae  kindly, 
Had  we  never  loved  sae  blindly, 
Never  met,  or  never  parted, 
We  had  ne'er  been  broken-hearted." 

But  a  whole  poem  of  that  quality  Burns  cannot  make;  the  rest, 
in  the  Farewell  to  Nancy,  is  verbiage. 

We  arrive  best  at  the  real  estimate  of  Burns,  I  think,  by  con- 
ceiving his  work  as  having  truth  of  matter  and  truth  of  manner, 
but  not  the  accent  or  the  poetic  virtue  of  the  highest  masters. 
His  genuine  criticism  of  life,  when  the  sheer  poet  in  him  speaks, 
is  ironic;   it  is  not  — 

"Thou  Power  Supreme,  whose  mighty  scheme 
These  woes  of  mine  fulfil, 
Here  firm  I  rest,  they  must  be  best 
Because  they  are  Thy  will !" 

It  is  far  rather:  Whistle  owre  the  lave  oHl  Yet  we  may  say  of 
him  as  of  Chaucer,  that  of  life  and  the  world,  as  they  come  before 


THE  STUDY   OF  POETRY 


291 


him,  his  view  is  large,  free,  shrewd,  benignant,  —  truly  poetic, 
therefore;  and  his  manner  of  rendering  what  he  sees  is  to  match. 
But  we  must  note,  at  the  same  time,  his  great  difference  from 
Chaucer.  The  freedom  of  Chaucer  is  heightened,  in  Burns, 
by  a  fiery,  reckless  energy;  the  benignity  of  Chaucer  deepens, 
in  Burns,  into  an  overwhelming  sense  of  the  pathos  of  things;  — 
of  the  pathos  of  human  nature,  the  pathos,  also,  of  non-human 
nature.  Instead  of  the  fluidity  of  Chaucer's  manner,  the  manner 
of  Burns  has  spring,  bounding  swiftness.  Burns  is  by  far  the 
greater  force,  though  he  has  perhaps  less  charm.  The  world  of 
Chaucer  is  fairer,  richer,  more  significant  than  that  of  Burns; 
but  when  the  largeness  and  freedom  of  Burns  get  full  sweep,  as 
in  Tarn  0'  Shanter,  or  still  more  in  that  puissant  and  splendid 
production.  The  Jolly  Beggars,  his  world  may  be  what  it  will, 
his  poetic  genius  triumphs  over  it.  In  the  world  of  The  Jolly 
Beggars  there  is  more  than  hideousness  and  squalor,  there  is 
bestiality;  yet  the  piece  is  a  superb  poetic  success.  It  has  a 
breadth,  truth,  and  power  which  make  the  famous  scene  in  Auer- 
bach's  Cellar,  of  Goethe's  Faust,  seem  artificial  and  tame  be- 
side it,  and  which  are  only  matched  by  Shakespeare  and  Aris- 
tophanes. 

Here,  where  his  largeness  and  freedom  serve  him  so  admirably, 
and  also  in  those  poems  and  songs  where  to  shrewdness  he  adds 
infinite  archness  and  wit,  and  to  benignity  infinite  pathos,  where 
his  manner  is  flawless,  and  a  perfect  poetic  whole  is  the  result,  — 
in  things  like  the  address  to  the  mouse  whose  home  he  had  ruined, 
in  things  like  Duncan  Gray,  Tarn  Glen,  Whistle  and  Pll  come  to 
you  my  Lad,  Auld  Lang  Syne  (this  list  might  be  made  much 
longer),  —  here  we  have  the  genuine  Burns,  of  whom  the  real 
estimate  must  be  high  indeed.  Not  a  classic,  nor  with  the  excel- 
lent cnrovhaioTrj^  of  the  great  classics,  nor  with  a  verse  rising  to  a 
criticism  of  life  and  a  virtue  like  theirs ;  but  a  poet  with  thorough 
truth  of  substance  and  an  answering  truth  of  style,  giving  us  a 
poetry  sound  to  the  core.  We  all  of  us  have  a  leaning  towards 
the  pathetic,  and  may  be  inclined  perhaps  to  prize  Burns  most 
for  his  touches  of  piercing,  sometimes  almost  intolerable,  pathos; 
for  verse  like  — 

"  We  twa  hae  paidl't  i'  the  burn 
From  mornin'  sun  till  dine ; 
But  seas  between  us  braid  hae  roar'd 
Sin  auld  lang  syne  ..." 


292  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

where  he  is  as  lovely  as  he  is  sound.  But  perhaps  it  is  by  the 
perfection  of  soundness  of  his  lighter  and  archer  masterpieces 
that  he  is  poetically  most  wholesome  for  us.  For  the  votary 
misled  by  a  personal  estimate  of  Shelley,  as  so  many  of  us  have 
been,  are,  and  will  be,  —  of  that  beautiful  spirit  building  his 
many-coloured  haze  of  words  and  images 

"  Pinnacled  dim  in  the  intense  inane  "  — 

no  contact  can  be  wholesomer  than  the  contact  with  Burns  at 
his  archest  and  soundest.     Side  by  side  with  the 

"  On  the  brink  of  the  night  and  the  morning 
My  coursers  are  wont  to  respire, 
But  the  Earth  has  just  whispered  a  warning 

That  their  flight  must  be  swifter  than  fire  ..." 

of  Prometheus  Unbound,  how  salutary,  how  very  salutary,  to  place 
this  from  Tarn  Glen  — 

"My  minnie  does  constantly  deave  me 
And  bids  me  beware  o'  young  men; 
They  flatter,  she  says,  to  deceive  me ; 
But  wha  can  think  sae  o'  Tam  Glen?" 

But  we  enter  on  burning  ground  as  we  approach  the  poetry  of 
times  so  near  to  us  —  poetry  like  that  of  Byron,  Shelley,  and 
Wordsworth  —  of  which  the  estimates  are  so  often  not  only  per- 
sonal, but  personal  with  passion.  For  my  purpose,  it  is  enough 
to  have  taken  the  single  case  of  Burns,  the  first  poet  we  come  to  of 
whose  work  the  estimate  formed  is  evidently  apt  to  be  personal, 
and  to  have  suggested  how  we  may  proceed,  using  the  poetry  of 
the  great  classics  as  a  sort  of  touchstone,  to  correct  this  estimate, 
as  we  had  previously  corrected  by  the  same  means  the  historic 
estimate  where  we  met  with  it.  A  collection  like  the  present,  with 
its  succession  of  celebrated  names  and  celebrated  poems,  offers 
a  good  opportunity  to  us  for  resolutely  endeavouring  to  make  our 
estimates  of  poetry  real.  I  have  sought  to  point  out  a  method 
which  will  help  us  in  making  them  so,  and  to  exhibit  it  in  use  so 
far  as  to  put  any  one  who  likes  in  a  way  of  applying  it  for  himself. 

At  any  rate  the  end  to  which  the  method  and  the  estimate  are 
designed  to  lead,  and  from  leading  to  which;  if  they  do  lead  to  it, 
they  get  their  whole  value,  —  the  benefit  of  being  able  clearly 
to  feel  and  deeply  to  enjoy  the  best,  the  truly  classic,  in  poetry,  — 
is  an  end,  let  me  say  it  once  more  at  parting,  of  supreme  imj)or- 


THE  STUDY   OF  POETRY  293 

tance.  We  are  often  told  that  an  era  is  opening  in  which  we  are 
to  see  multitudes  of  a  common  sort  of  readers,  and  masses  of  a 
common  sort  of  literature ;  that  such  readers  do  not  want  and 
could  not  relish  anything  better  than  such  literature,  and  that  to 
provide  it  is  becoming  a  vast  and  profitable  industry.  Even  if 
good  literature  entirely  lost  currency  with  the  world,  it  would 
still  be  abundantly  worth  while  to  continue  to  enjoy  it  by  oneself. 
But  it  never  will  lose  currency  with  the  world,  in  spite  of  momen- 
tary appearances;  it  never  will  lose  supremacy.  Currency  and 
supremacy  are  insured  to  it,  not  indeed  by  the  world's  deliberate 
and  conscious  choice,  but  by  something  far  deeper,  —  by  the 
instinct  of  self-preservation  in  humanity. 


XIV 

SAMUEL  TAYLOR  COLERIDGE 

(i 772-1834) 

ON   POETRY   AND   POETIC   POWER 
[Chapters  XIV.  and  XV.  of  Biographia  Literaria,  1817.] 

During  the  first  year  that  Mr.  Wordsworth  and  I  were  neigh- 
bours, our  conversation  turned  frequently  on  the  two  cardinal  points 
of  poetry,  the  power  of  exciting  the  sympathy  of  the  reader  by  a 
faithful  adherence  to  the  truth  of  nature,  and  the  power  of  giving 
the  interest  of  novelty  by  the  modifying  colours  of  imagination. 
The  sudden  charm,  which  accidents  of  light  and  shade,  which 
moonlight  or  sunset,  diffused  over  a  known  and  familiar  landscape, 
appeared  to  represent  the  practicability  of  combining  both.  These 
are  the  poetry  of  nature.  The  thought  suggested  itself  (to  which 
of  us  I  do  not  recollect)  that  a  series  of  poems  might  be  composed 
of  two  sorts.  In  the  one,  the  incidents  and  agents  were  to  be, 
in  part  at  least,  supernatural;  and  the  excellence  aimed  at  was 
to  consist  in  the  interesting  of  the  affections  by  the  dramatic  truth 
of  such  emotions,  as  would  naturally  accompany  such  situations, 
supposing  them  real.  And  real  in  this  sense  they  have  been  to 
every  human  being  who,  from  whatever  source  of  delusion,  has 
at  any  time  believed  himself  under  supernatural  agency.  For  the 
second  class,  subjects  were  to  be  chosen  from  ordinary  life;  the 
characters  and  incidents  were  to  be  such  as  will  be  found  in  every 
village  and  its  vicinity  where  there  is  a  meditative  and  feeling  mind 
to  seek  after  them,  or  to  notice  them  when  they  present  themselves. 

In  this  idea  originated  the  plan  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads;  in  which 
it  was  agreed  that  my  endeavours  should  be  directed  to  persons 
and  characters  supernatural,  or  at  least  romantic;  yet  so  as  to 
transfer  from  our  inward  nature  a  human  interest  and  a  semblance 
of  truth  sufficient  to  procure  for  these  shadows  of  imagination  that 

294 


ON   POETRY   AND   POETIC  POWER  295 

willing  suspension  of  disbelief  for  the  moment,  which  constitutes 
poetic  faith.  Mr.  Wordsworth,  on  the  other  hand,  was  to  propose 
to  himself  as  his  object,  to  give  the  charm  of  novelty  to  things  of 
every  day,  and  to  excite  a  feeling  analogous  to  the  supernatural, 
by  awakening  the  mind's  attention  from  the  lethargy  of  custom, 
and  directing  it  to  the  loveliness  and  the  wonders  of  the  world  before 
us ;  an  inexhaustible  treasure,  but  for  which,  in  consequence  of  the 
film  of  familiarity  and  selfish  solicitude,  we  have  eyes,  yet  see  not, 
ears  that  hear  not,  and  hearts  that  neither  feel  nor  understand. 

With  this  view  I  wrote  the  Ancient  Mariner,  and  was  preparing, 
among  other  poems,  the  Dark  Ladie,  and  the  Christahel,  in  which 
I  should  have  more  nearly  realized  my  ideal  than  I  had  done  in  my 
first  attempt.  But  Mr.  Wordsworth's  industry  had  proved  so 
much  more  successful,  and  the  number  of  his  poems  so  much 
greater,  that  my  compositions,  instead  of  forming  a  balance,  ap- 
peared rather  an  interpolation  of  heterogeneous  matter.  Mr. 
Wordsworth  added  two  or  three  poems  written  in  his  own  char- 
acter, in  the  impassioned,  lofty,  and  sustained  diction  which  is 
characteristic  of  his  genius.  In  this  form  the  Lyrical  Ballads 
were  published;  and  were  presented  by  him,  as  an  experiment, 
whether  subjects,  which  from  their  nature  rejected  the  usual  orna- 
ments and  extra-colloquial  style  of  poems  in  general,  might  not  be 
so  managed  in  the  language  of  ordinary  life  as  to  produce  the  pleas- 
urable interest  which  it  is  the  peculiar  business  of  poetry  to  impart. 
To  the  second  edition  he  added  a  preface  of  considerable  length; 
in  which,  notwithstanding  some  passages  of  apparently  a  contrary 
import,  he  was  understood  to  contend  for  the  extension  of  this 
style  to  poetry  of  all  kinds,  and  to  reject  as  vicious  and  indefensible 
all  phrases  and  forms  of  style  that  were  not  included  in  what  he 
(unfortunately,  I  think,  adopting  an  equivocal  expression)  called 
the  language  of  real  life.  From  this  preface,  prefixed  to  poems  in 
which  it  was  impossible  to  deny  the  presence  of  original  genius, 
however  mistaken  its  direction  might  be  deemed,  arose  the  whole 
long-continued  controversy.  For  from  the  conjunction  of  perceived 
power  with  supposed  heresy  I  explain  the  inveteracy,  and  in  some 
instances,  I  grieve  to  say,  the  acrimonious  passions,  with  which  the 
controversy  has  been  conducted  by  the  assailants. 

Had  Mr.  Wordsworth's  poems  been  the  silly,  the  childish  things 
which  they  were  for  a  long  time  described  as  being ;  had  they  been 
really  distinguished  from  the  compositions  of  other  poets  merely 
by  meanness  of  language  and  inanity  of  thought ;  had  they  indeed 


296  SAMUEL    TAYLOR   COLERIDGE 

contained  nothing  more  than  what  is  found  in  the  parodies  and  pre- 
tended imitations  of  them;  they  must  have  sunk  at  once,  a  dead 
weight,  into  the  slough  of  oblivion,  and  have  dragged  the  preface 
along  with  them.  But  year  after  year  increased  the  number  of 
Mr.  Wordsworth's  admirers.  They  were  found,  too,  not  in  the 
lower  classes  of  the  reading  public,  but  chiefly  among  young  men  of 
strong  sensibility  and  meditative  minds;  and  their  admiration  (in- 
flamed perhaps  in  some  degree  by  opposition)  was  distinguished 
by  its  intensity,  I  might  almost  say,  by  its  religious  fervour.  These 
facts,  and  the  intellectual  energy  of  the  author,  which  was  more  or 
less  consciously  felt,  where  it  was  outwardly  and  even  boisterously 
denied,  meeting  with  sentiments  of  aversion  to  his  opinions,  and  of 
alarm  at  their  consequences,  produced  an  eddy  of  criticism,  which 
would  of  itself  have  borne  up  the  poems  by  the  violence  with  which 
it  whirled  them  round  and  round.  With  many  parts  of  this  pref- 
ace, in  the  sense  attributed  to  them,  and  which  the  words  un- 
doubtedly seem  to  authorize,  I  never  concurred;  but,  on  the 
contrary,  objected  to  them  as  erroneous  in  principle,  and  as  con- 
tradictory (in  appearance  at  least)  both  to  other  parts  of  the  same 
preface  and  to  the  author's  own  practice  in  the  greater  number 
of  the  poems  themselves.  Mr.  Wordsworth,  in  his  recent  collec- 
tion, has,  I  find,  degraded  this  prefatory  disquisition  to  the  end  of 
his  second  volume,  to  be  read  or  not  at  the  reader's  choice.  But 
he  has  not,  as  far  as  I  can  discover,  announced  any  change  in  his 
poetic  creed.  At  all  events,  considering  it  as  the  source  of  a  con- 
troversy, in  which  I  have  been  honoured  more  than  I  deserve  by 
the  frequent  conjunction  of  my  name  with  his,  I  think  it  expedient 
to  declare,  once  for  all,  in  what  points  I  coincide  with  his  opinions, 
and  in  what  points  I  altogether  differ.  But  in  order  to  render  my- 
self intelligible,  I  must  previously,  in  as  few  words  as  possible,  ex- 
plain my  ideas,  first,  of  a  poem;  and  secondly,  of  poetry  itself,  in 
kind  and  in  essence. 

The  office  of  philosophical  disquisition  consists  in  just  distinc- 
tion ;  while  it  is  the  privilege  of  the  philosopher  to  preserve  himself 
constantly  aware  that  distinction  is  not  division.  In  order  to  ob- 
tain adequate  notions  of  any  truth,  we  must  intellectually  separate 
its  distinguishable  parts ;  and  this  is  the  technical  process  of  philoso- 
phy. But  having  so  done,  we  must  then  restore  them  in  our  con- 
ceptions to  the  unity  in  which  they  actually  coexist;  and  this  is 
the-result  of  philosophy. 

A  poem  contains  the  same  elements  as  a  prose  composition; 


ON   POETRY   AND   POETIC   POWER  297 

the  difference,  therefore,  must  consist  in  a  different  combination  of 
them,  in  consequence  of  a  diiferent  object  proposed.  According 
to  the  difference  of  the  object  will  be  the  difference  of  the  combina- 
tion. It  is  possible  that  the  object  may  be  merely  to  facilitate  the 
recollection  of  any  given  facts  or  observations  by  artificial  arrange- 
ment; and  the  composition  will  be  a  poem,  merely  because  it  is 
distinguished  from  prose  by  metre,  or  by  rhyme,  or  by  both  con- 
jointly. In  this,  the  lowest  sense,  a  man  might  attribute  the  name 
of  a  poem  to  the  well-known  enumeration  of  the  days  in  the  several 
months  — 

Thirty  days  hath  September, 
April,  June,  and  November,  etc. 

and  others  of  the  same  class  and  purpose.  And  as  a  particular 
pleasure  is  found  in  anticipating  the  recurrence  of  sounds  and 
quantities,  all  compositions  that  have  this  charm  superadded, 
whatever  be  their  contents,  may  be  entitled  poems. 

So  much  for  the  superficial  form.  A  difference  of  object  and 
contents  supplies  an  additional  ground  of  distinction.  The  imme- 
diate purpose  may  be  the  communication  of  truths ;  either  of  truth 
absolute  and  demonstrable,  as  in  works  of  science;  or  of  facts 
experienced  and  recorded,  as  in  history.  Pleasure,  and  that  of  the 
highest  and  most  permanent  kind,  may  result  from  the  attainment 
of  the  end ;  but  it  is  not  itself  the  immediate  end.  In  other  works 
the  communication  of  pleasure  may  be  the  immediate  purpose; 
and  though  truth,  either  moral  or  intellectual,  ought  to  be  the  ulti- 
mate end,  yet  this  will  distinguish  the  character  of  the  author,  not 
the  class  to  which  the  work  belongs.  Blest  indeed  is  that  state  of 
society,  in  which  the  immediate  purpose  would  be  baf]fled  by  the 
perversion  of  the  proper  ultimate  end ;  in  which  no  charm  of  diction 
or  imagery  could  exempt  the  Bathyllus  even  of  an  Anacreon,  or 
the  Alexis  of  Virgil,  from  disgust  and  aversion ! 

But  the  communication  of  pleasure  may  be  the  immediate  ob- 
ject of  a  work  not  metrically  composed ;  and  that  object  may  have 
been  in  a  high  degree  attained,  as  in  novels  and  romances.  Would 
then  the  mere  superaddition  of  metre,  with  or  without  rhyme, 
entitle  these  to  the  name  of  poems  ?  The  answer  is,  that  nothing 
can  permanently  please  which  does  not  contain  in  itself  the  reason 
why  it  is  so,  and  not  otherwise.  If  metre  be  superadded,  all  other 
parts  must  be  made  consonant  with  it.  They  must  be  such  as  to 
justify  the  perpetual  and  distinct  attention  to  each  part,  which  an 


298  SAMUEL   TAYLOR   COLERIDGE 

exact  correspondent  recurrence  of  accent  and  sound  are  calculated 
to  excite.  The  final  definition  then,  so  deduced,  may  be  thus 
worded.  A  poem  is  that  species  of  composition  which  is  opposed 
to  works  of  science,  by  proposing  for  its  immediate  object  pleasure, 
not  truth;  and  from  all  other  species  (having  this  object  in  com- 
mon with  it)  it  is  discriminated  by  proposing  to  itself  such  delight 
from  the  whole  as  is  compatible  with  a  distinct  gratification  from 
each  component  part. 

Controversy  is  not  seldom  excited  in  consequence  of  the  dispu- 
tants attaching  each  a  different  meaning  to  the  same  word;  and 
in  few  instances  has  this  been  more  striking  than  in  disputes  con- 
cerning the  present  subject.  If  a  man  chooses  to  call  every  com- 
position a  poem  which  is  rhyme,  or  measure,  or  both,  I  must  leave 
his  opinion  uncontroverted.  The  distinction  is  at  least  competent 
to  characterize  the  writer's  intention.  If  it  were  subjoined  that 
the  whole  is  likewise  entertaining  or  affecting,  as  a  tale,  or  as  a 
series  of  interesting  reflections,  I  of  course  admit  this  as  another  fit 
ingredient  of  a  poem,  and  an  additional  merit.  But  if  the  defini- 
tion sought  for  be  that  of  a  legitimate  poem,  I  answer,  it  must  be 
one  the  parts  of  which  mutually  support  and  explain  each  other; 
all  in  their  proportion  harmonizing  with,  and  supporting  the  pur- 
pose and  known  influences  of  metrical  arrangement.  The  philo- 
sophic critics  of  all  ages  coincide  with  the  ultimate  judgment  of  all 
countries,  in  equally  denying  the  praises  of  a  just  poem,  on  the  one 
hand  to  a  series  of  striking  lines  or  distichs,  each  of  which,  absorb- 
ing the  whole  attention  of  the  reader  to  itself,  disjoins  it  from  its 
context,  and  makes  it  a  separate  whole,  instead  of  a  harmonizing 
part;  and  on  the  other  hand,  to  an  unsustained  composition,  from 
which  the  reader  collects  rapidly  the  general  result  unattracted  by 
the  component  parts.  The  reader  should  be  carried  forward,  not 
merely  or  chiefly  by  the  mechanical  impulse  of  curiosity,  or  by  a 
restless  desire  to  arrive  at  the  final  solution ;  but  by  the  pleasurable 
activity  of  mind  excited  by  the  attractions  of  the  journey  itself. 
Like  the  motion  of  a  serpent,  which  the  Egyptians  made  the  em- 
blem of  intellectual  power;  or  like  the  path  of  sound  through  the 
air,  at  every  step  he  pauses  and  half  recedes,  and  froni  the  retro- 
gressive movement  collects  the  force  which  again  carries  him  on- 
ward. PrcEcipitandiis  est  liber  spirilus,^  says  Petronius  Arbiter 
most  happily.     The  epithet,  liber,  here  balances  the  preceding  verb, 

'  [The  unrestrained  spirit  must  go  headlong.] 


ON  POETRY  AND  POETIC  POWER  299 

and  it  is  not  easy  to  conceive  more  meaning  condensed  in  fewer 
words. 

But  if  this  should  be  admitted  as  a  satisfactory  character  of  a 
poem,  we  have  still  to  seek  for  a  definition  of  poetry.  The  writings 
of  Plato  and  Bishop  Taylor,  and  the  Theoria  Sacra  of  Burnet,  fur- 
nish undeniable  proofs  that  poetry  of  the  highest  kind  may  exist 
without  metre,  and  even  without  the  contradistinguishing  objects 
of  a  poem.  The  first  chapter  of  Isaiah  (indeed  a  very  large  propor- 
tion of  the  whole  book)  is  poetry  in  the  most  emphatic  sense ;  yet 
it  would  be  not  less  irrational  than  strange  to  assert  that  pleasure, 
and  not  truth,  was  the  immediate  object  of  the  prophet.  In  short, 
whatever  specific  import  we  attach  to  the  word  poetry,  there  will 
be  found  involved  in  it,  as  a  necessary  consequence,  that  a  poem  of 
any  length  neither  can  be,  nor  ought  to  be,  all  poetry.  Yet  if  a 
harmonious  whole  is  to  be  produced,  the  remaining  parts  must  be 
preserved  in  keeping  with  the  poetry;  and  this  can  be  no  otherwise 
effected  than  by  such  a  studied  selection  and  artificial  arrangement 
as  will  partake  of  one,  though  not  a  peculiar,  property  of  poetry. 
And  this  again  can  be  no  other  than  the  property  of  exciting  a  more 
continuous  and  equal  attention  than  the  language  of  prose  aims  at, 
whether  colloquial  or  written. 

My  own  conclusions  on  the  nature  of  poetry,  in  the  strictest  use 
of  the  word,  have  been  in  part  anticipated  in  the  preceding  disqui- 
sition on  the  fancy  and  imagination.  What  is  poetry  ?  is  so  nearly 
the  same  question  with,  what  is  a  poet  ?  that  the  answer  to  the  one 
is  involved  in  the  solution  of  the  other.  For  it  is  a  distinction  re- 
sulting from  the  poetic  genius  itself,  which  sustains  and  modifies 
the  images,  thoughts,  and  emotions  of  the  poet's  own  mind.  The 
poet,  described  in  ideal  perfection,  brings  the  whole  soul  of  man 
into  activity,  with  the  subordination  of  its  faculties  to  each  other, 
according  to  their  relative  worth  and  dignity.  He  diffuses  a  tone 
and  spirit  of  unity  that  blends,  and  (as  it  were)  fuses,  each  into  each, 
by  that  synthetic  and  magical  power  to  which  we  have  exclusively 
appropriated  the  name  of  imagination.  This  power,  first  put  in 
action  by  the  will  and  understanding,  and  retained  under  their 
irremissive,  though  gentle  and  unnoticed,  control  {laxis  effertur 
hahenis),^  reveals  itself  in  the  balance  or  reconciliation  of  opposite 
or  discordant  qualities :  of  sameness,  with  difference;  of  the  gen- 
eral, with  the  concrete;   the  idea,  with  the  image;   the  individual, 

*  [He  holds  the  reins  lightly.] 


300  SAMUEL   TAYLOR  COLERIDGE 

with  the  representative;  the  sense  of  novelty  and  freshness,  with 
old  and  familiar  objects;  a  more  than  usual  state  of  emotion,  with 
more  than  usual  order;  judgment  ever  awake  and  steady  self- 
possession,  with  enthusiasm  and  feeling  profound  or  vehement; 
and  while  it  blends  and  harmonizes  the  natural  and  the  artificial, 
still  subordinates  art  to  nature,  the  manner  to  the  matter,  and  our 
admiration  of  the  poet  to  our  sympathy  with  the  poetry.  Doubt- 
less, as  Sir  John  Davies  observes  of  the  soul  (and  his  words  may 
with  slight  alteration  be  applied,  and  even  more  appropriately, 
to  the  poetic  imagination)  — 

Doubtless  this  could  not  be,  but  that  she  turns 
Bodies  to  spirit  by  sublimation  strange, 
As  fire  converts  to  fire  the  things  it  burns, 
As  we  our  food  into  our  nature  change. 

From  their  gross  matter  she  abstracts  their  forms, 
And  draws  a  kind  of  quintessence  from  things; 
Which  to  her  proper  nature  she  transforms 
To  bear  them  Hght  on  her  celestial  wings. 

Thus  does  she,  when  from  individual  states 
She  doth  abstract  the  universal  kinds ; 
Which  then  re-clothed  in  divers  names  and  fates 
Steal  access  through  our  senses  to  our  minds. 

Finally,  good  sense  is  the  body  of  poetic  genius,  fancy  its  dra- 
pery, motion  its  life,  and  imagination  the  soul  that  is  everywhere, 
and  in  each ;  and  forms  all  into  one  graceful  and  intelligent  whole. 

In  the  application  of  these  principles  to  purposes  of  practical 
criticism  as  employed  in  the  appraisal  of  works  more  or  less  im- 
perfect, I  have  endeavoured  to  discover  what  the  qualities  in  a 
poem  are,  which  may  be  deemed  promises  and  specific  symptoms 
of  poetic  power,  as  distinguished  from  general  talent  determined 
to  poetic  composition  by  accidental  motives,  by  an  act  of  the  will, 
rather  than  by  the  inspiration  of  a  genial  and  productive  nature. 
In  this  investigation,  I  could  not,  I  thought,  do  better  than  keep 
before  me  the  earliest  work  of  the  greatest  genius  that  perhaps  hu- 
man nature  has  yet  produced,  our  myriad-minded  Shakespeare. 
I  mean  the  Venus  and  Adonis,  and  the  Lncrece;  works  which  give 
at  once  strong  promises  of  the  strength,  and  yet  obvious  proofs  of 
the  immaturity,  of  his  genius.  From  these  I  abstracted  the  follow- 
ing marks,  as  characteristics  of  original  y^oetic  genius  in  general. 


ON   POETRY  AND  POETIC  POWER  30I 

1.  In  the  Venus  and  Adonis  the  first  and  obvious  excellence  is 
the  perfect  sweetness  of  the  versification,  its  adaptation  to  the  sub- 
ject, and  the  power  displayed  in  varying  the  march  of  the  words 
without  passing  into  a  loftier  and  more  majestic  rhythm  than  was 
demanded  by  the  thoughts,  or  permitted  by  the  propriety  of  pre- 
serving a  sense  of  melody  predominant.  The  delight  in  richness 
and  sweetness  of  sound,  even  to  a  faulty  excess,  if  it  be  evidently 
original,  and  not  the  result  of  an  easily  imitable  mechanism,  I  re- 
gard as  a  highly  favourable  promise  in  the  compositions  of  a  young 
man.  "The  man  that  hath  not  music  in  his  soul"  can  indeed 
never  be  a  genuine  poet.  Imagery  (even  taken  from  nature,  much 
more  when  transplanted  from  books,  as  travels,  voyages,  and  works 
of  natural  history),  affecting  incidents,  just  thoughts,  interesting 
personal  or  domestic  feelings,  and  with  these  the  art  of  their 
combination  or  intertexture  in  the  form  of  a  poem,  may  all  by 
incessant  effort  be  acquired  as  a  trade,  by  a  man  of  talents  and  much 
reading,  who,  as  I  once  before  observed,  has  mistaken  an  intense 
desire  of  poetic  reputation  for  a  natural  poetic  genius ;  the  love  of 
the  arbitrary  end  for  a  possession  of  the  peculiar  means.  But  the 
sense  of  musical  delight,  with  the  power  of  producing  it,  is  a  gift 
of  imagination ;  and  this,  together  with  the  power  of  reducing  mul- 
titude into  unity  of  effect,  and  modifying  a  series  of  thoughts  by 
some  one  predominant  thought  or  feeling,  may  be  cultivated  and 
improved,  but  can  never  be  learnt.  It  is  in  these  that  Poeta  nasci- 
tur  nonfit} 

2.  A  second  promise  of  genius  is  the  choice  of  subjects  very  re- 
mote from  the  private  interests  and  circumstances  of  the  writer  him- 
self. At  least  I  have  found  that  where  the  subject  is  taken  imme- 
diately from  the  author's  personal  sensations  and  experiences,  the 
excellence  of  a  particular  poem  is  but  an  equivocal  mark,  and 
often  a  fallacious  pledge,  of  genuine  poetic  power.  We  may  per- 
haps remember  the  tale  of  the  statuary,  who  had  acquired  consider- 
able reputation  for  the  legs  of  his  goddesses,  though  the  rest  of  the 
statue  accorded  but  indifferently  with  ideal  beauty;  till  his  wife, 
elated  by  her  husband's  praises,  modestly  acknowledged  that  she 
herself  had  been  his  constant  model.  In  the  Venus  and  Adonis 
this  proof  of  poetic  power  exists  even  to  excess.  It  is  throughout 
as  if  a  superior  spirit,  more  intuitive,  more  intimately  conscious 
even  than  the  characters  themselves,  not  only  of  every  outward 
look  and  act,  but  of  the  flux  and  reflux  of  the  mind  in  all  its  subtlest 

1  [The  poet  is  born,  not  made.] 


302  SAMUEL    TAYLOR  COLERIDGE 

thoughts  and  feelings,  were  placing  the  whole  before  our  view; 
himself  meanwhile  unparticipating  in  the  passions,  and  actuated 
only  by  that  pleasurable  excitement  which  had  resulted  from  the 
energetic  fervour  of  his  own  spirit,  in  so  vividly  exhibiting  what  it 
had  so  accurately  and  profoundly  contemplated.  I  think  I  should 
have  conjectured  from  these  poems  that  even  then  the  great  in- 
stinct which  impelled  the  poet  to  the  drama  was  secretly  working 
in  him,  prompting  him  by  a  series  and  never-broken  chain  of  im- 
agery, always  vivid,  and  because  unbroken,  often  minute;  by  the 
highest  effort  of  the  picturesque  in  words,  of  which  words  are 
capable,  higher  perhaps  than  was  ever  realized  by  any  other  poet, 
even  Dante  not  excepted;  to  provide  a  substitute  for  that  visual 
language,  that  constant  intervention  and  running  comment  by 
tone,  look,  and  gesture,  which,  in  his  dramatic  works,  he  was 
entitled  to  expect  from  the  players.  His  Venus  and  Adonis  seem 
at  once  the  characters  themselves,  and  the  whole  representation  of 
those  characters  by  the  most  consummate  actors.  You  seem  to  be 
told  nothing,  but  to  see  and  hear  everything.  Hence  it  is  that  from 
the  perpetual  activity  of  attention  required  on  the  part  of  the  reader; 
from  the  rapid  flow,  the  quick  change,  and  the  playful  nature  of 
the  thoughts  and  images;  and,  above  all,  from  the  alienation,  and, 
if  I  may  hazard  such  an  expression,  the  utter  aloofness  of  the  poet's 
own  feelings  from  those  of  which  he  is  at  once  the  painter  and  the 
analyst;  that,  though  the  very  subject  cannot  but  detract  from  the 
pleasure  of  a  delicate  mind,  yet  never  was  poem  less  dangerous  on 
a  moral  account.  Instead  of  doing  as  Ariosto,  and  as,  still  more 
offensively,  Wieland  has  done ;  instead  of  degrading  and  deform- 
ing passion  into  appetite,  the  trials  of  love  into  the  struggles  of  con- 
cupiscence, Shakespeare  has  here  represented  the  animal  impulse 
itself  so  as  to  preclude  all  sympathy  with  it,  by  dissipating  the  read- 
er's notice  among  the  thousand  outward  images,  and  now  beautiful, 
now  fanciful  circumstances,  which  form  its  dresses  and  its  scenery; 
or  by  diverting  our  attention  from  the  main  subject  by  those  fre- 
quent witty  or  profound  reflections  which  the  poet's  ever  active 
mind  has  deduced  from,  or  connected  with,  the  imagery  and  the 
incidents.  The  reader  is  forced  into  too  much  action  to  sym- 
pathize with  the  merely  passive  of  our  nature.  As  little  can  a  mind 
thus  roused  and  awakened  be  brooded  on  by  mean  and  instinct 
emotion,  as  the  low,  lazy  mist  can  creep  upon  the  surface  of  a  lake 
while  a  strong  gale  is  driving  it  onward  in  waves  and  billows. 
3.   It  has  been  before  observed  that  images,  however  beautiful, 


ON   POETRY   AND   POETIC   POWER  303 

though  faithfully  copied  from  nature,  and  as  accurately  represented 
in  words,  do  not  of  themselves  characterize  the  poet.  They  be- 
come proofs  of  original  genius  only  as  far  as  they  are  modified  by  a 
predominant  passion ;  or  by  associated  thoughts  or  images  awak- 
ened by  that  passion;  or  when  they  have  the  effect  of  reducing 
multitude  to  unity,  or  succession  to  an  instant ;  or,  lastly,  when  a 
human  and  intellectual  life  is  transferred  to  them  from  the  poet's 
own  spirit, 

Which  shoots  its  being  through  earth,  sea,  and  air. 

In  the  two  following  lines,  for  instance,  there  is  nothing  objec- 
tionable, nothing  which  would  preclude  them  from  forming,  in  their 
proper  place,  part  of  a  descriptive  poem :  — 

Behold  yon  row  of  pines,  that  shorn  and  bow'd 
Bend  from  the  sea-blast,  seen  at  twiHght  eve. 

But  with  the  small  alteration  of  rhythm,  the  same  words  would  be 
equally  in  their  place  in  a  book  of  topography,  or  in  a  descriptive 
tour.  The  same  image  will  rise  into  a  semblance  of  poetry  if  thus 
conveyed : — 

Yon  row  of  bleak  and  visionary  pines, 
By  twilight-glimpse  discerned,  mark !   how  they  flee 
From  the  fierce  sea-blast,  all  their  tresses  wild 
Streaming  before  them. 

I  have  given  this  as  an  illustration,  by  no  means  as  an  instance, 
of  that  particular  excellence  which  I  had  in  view,  and  in  which 
Shakespeare,  even  in  his  earliest  as  in  his  latest  works,  surpasses 
all  other  poets.  It  is  by  this  that  he  still  gives  a  dignity  and  a  pas- 
sion to  the  objects  which  he  presents.  Unaided  by  any  previous 
excitement,  they  burst  upon  us  at  once  in  life  and  in  power. 

Full  many  a  glorious  morning  have  I  seen 

Flatter  the  mountain-tops  with  sovereign  eye.  —  Sojinet  i^. 

Not  mine  own  fears,  nor  the  prophetic  soul 
Of  the  wide  world  dreaming  on  things  to  come, 
Can  yet  the  lease  of  my  true  love  control, 
Supposed  as  forfeit  to  a  confined  doom. 
The  mortal  moon  hath  her  eclipse  endured, 
And  the  sad  augurs  mock  their  own  presage : 
Incertainties  now  crown  themselves  assured, 
And  peace  proclaims  olives  of  endless  age. 


304  SAMUEL   TAYLOR  COLERIDGE 

Now  with  the  drops  of  this  most  balmy  time 
My  love  looks  fresh:   and  Death  to  me  subscribes, 
Since,  spite  of  him,  I'll  live  in  this  poor  rhyme, 
While  he  insults  o'er  dull  and  speechless  tribes. 
And  thou  in  this  shalt  find  thy  monument. 
When  tyrants'  crests  and  tombs  of  brass  are  spent. 

—  Sonnet  107. 

As  of  higher  worth,  so  doubtless  still  more  characteristic  of  poetic 
genius  does  the  imagery  become,  when  it  moulds  and  colours  itself 
to  the  circumstances,  passion,  or  character,  present  and  foremost 
in  the  mind.  For  unrivalled  instances  of  this  excellence  the  reader's 
own  memory  will  refer  him  to  the  Lear,  Othello,  in  short,  to  which 
not  of  the  ' '  great,  ever  living,  dead  man's"  dramatic  works  ?  Inopem 
me  copia  fecit}  How  true  it  is  to  nature,  he  has  himself  finely 
expressed  in  the  instance  of  love  in  Sonnet  g8 :  — 

From  you  have  I  been  absent  in  the  spring, 
When  proud-pied  April  drest  in  all  his  trim 
Hath  put  a  spirit  of  youth  in  every  thing, 
That  heavy  Saturn  laugh'd  and  leap'd  with  him. 

Yet  nor  the  lays  of  birds,  nor  the  sweet  smell 

Of  dilTerent  flowers  in  odour  and  in  hue, 

Could  make  me  any  summer's  story  tell. 

Or  from  their  proud  lap  pluck  them  where  they  grew; 

Nor  did  I  wonder  at  the  lily's  white, 

Nor  praise  the  deep  vermilion  in  the  rose; 

They  were,  but  sweet,  but  figures  of  delight. 

Drawn  after  you,  you  pattern  of  all  those. 

Yet  seem'd  it  winter  still  and,  you  away, 

As  with  your  shadow  I  with  these  did  play  I 

Scarcely  less  sure,  or  if  a  less  valuable,  not  less  indispensable 
mark 

VoVLfJLOV  fliV  IloLrjTOV 

• oo-Tis  p'J/Aa  yevvalov  Xdnot,' 


will  the  imagery  supply  when,  with  more  than  the  power  of  the 
painter,  the  poet  gives  us  the  liveliest  image  of  succession  with  the 
feeling  of  simultaneousness ! 

•  [Abundance  has  made  me  poor.] 

*  [There's  not  one  hearty  Poet  amongst  them  all 

That's  fit  to  risque  an  adventurous  valiant  phrase. 

—  Frere's  translation  of  Aristophanes's  Frogs.] 


ON   POETRY   AND   POETIC   POWER  305 

With  this  he  breaketh  from  the  sweet  embrace 

Of  those  fair  arms,  that  bound  him  to  her  breast, 

And  homeward  through  the  dark  laund  runs  apace : 

Look  how  a  bright  star  shooteth  from  the  sky! 

So  glides  he  in  the  night  jrom  Venus'  eye.  —  Venus  and  Adonis,  1.  811. 

4.  The  last  character  I  shall  mention,  which  would  prove  indeed 
but  little,  except  as  taken  conjointly  with  the  former;  yet  without 
which  the  former  could  scarce  exist  in  a  high  degree,  and  (even  if 
this  were  possible)  would  give  promises  only  of  transitory  flashes 
and  a  meteoric  power ;  —  its  depth  and  energy  of  thought.  No 
man  was  ever  yet  a  great  poet  without  being  at  the  same  time  a  pro- 
found philosopher.  For  poetry  is  the  blossom  and  the  fragrancy 
of  all  human  knowledge,  human  thoughts,  human  passions,  emo- 
tions, language.  In  Shakespeare's  Poems  the  creative  power  and 
the  intellectual  energy  wrestle  as  in  a  war  embrace.  Each  in  its 
excess  of  strength  seems  to  threaten  the  extinction  of  the  other.  At 
length,  in  the  drama  they  were  reconciled,  and  fought  each  with  its 
shield  before  the  breast  of  the  other.  Or  like  two  rapid  streams 
that,  at  their  first  meeting  within  narrow  and  rocky  banks,  mutually 
strive  to  repel  each  other,  and  intermix  reluctantly  and  in  tumult, 
but  soon  finding  a  wider  channel  and  more  yielding  shores,  blend 
and  dilate,  and  flow  on  in  one  current  and  with  one  voice.  The 
Venus  and  Adonis  did  not  perhaps  allow  the  display  of  the  deeper 
passions.  But  the  story  of  Lucretia  seems  to  favour,  and  even 
demand,  their  intensest  workings.  And  yet  we  find  in  Shake- 
speare's management  of  the  tale  neither  pathos  nor  any  other  dra- 
matic quality.  There  is  the  same  minute  and  faithful  imagery 
as  in  the  former  poem,  in  the  same  vivid  colours,  inspirited  by  the 
same  impetuous  vigour  of  thought,  and  diverging  and  contracting 
with  the  same  activity  of  the  assimilative  and  of  the  modifying 
faculties;  and  with  a  yet  larger  display,  a  yet  wider  range  of 
knowledge  and  reflection;  and  lastly,  with  the  same  perfect  do- 
minion, often  domination,  over  the  whole  world  of  language. 
What,  then,  shall  we  say?  even  this,  that  Shakespeare,  no  mere 
child  of  nature;  no  automaton  of  genius;  no  passive  vehicle  of 
inspiration  possessed  by  the  spirit,  not  possessing  it;  first  studied 
patiently,  meditated  deeply,  understood  minutely,  till  knowledge, 
become  habitual  and  intuitive,  wedded  itself  to  his  habitual  feel- 
ings, and  at  length  gave  birth  to  that  stupendous  power,  by  which 
he  stands  alone,  with  no  equal  or  second  in  his  own  class ;  to  that 
power  which  seated  him  on  one  of  the  two  glory-smitten  summits  of 


3o6  SAMUEL   TAYLOR  COLERIDGE 

the  poetic  mountain,  with  Milton  as  his  compeer,  not  rival.  While 
the  former  darts  himself  forth,  and  passes  into  all  the  forms  of  hu- 
man character  and  passion,  the  one  Proteus  of  the  fire  and  the 
flood;  the  other  attracts  all  forms  and  things  to  himself,  into  the 
unity  of  his  own  ideal.  All  things  and  modes  of  action  shape 
themselves  anew  in  the  being  of  Milton;  while  Shakespeare  be- 
comes all  things,  yet  forever  remaining  himself.  O  what  great 
men  hast  thou  not  produced,  England,  my  country !  Truly,  indeed, 

Must  we  be  free  or  die,  who  speak  the  tongue, 
Which  Shakespeare  spake ;   the  faith  and  morals  hold, 
Which  Milton  held.     In  everything  we  are  sprung 
Of  earth's  first  blood,  have  titles  manifold. 


XV 

PERCY  BYSSHE   SHELLEY 
(i 792-1822) 

A  DEFENCE   OF   POETRY 

[An  answer  written  in  1821,  to  Peacock's  lively  essay,  The  Four  Ages  of 
Poetry  (Oilier' s  Literary  Magazine,  1820)  and  intended  for  the  Liberal,  but 
first  published  by  Mrs.  Shelley  in  the  Essays,  1840.] 

According  to  one  mode  of  regarding  those  two  classes  of  mental 
action,  which  are  called  reason  and  imagination,  the  former  may 
be  considered  as  mind  contemplating  the  relations  borne  by  one 
thought  to  another,  however  produced;  and  the  latter,  as  mind 
acting  upon  those  thoughts  so  as  to  colour  them  with  its  own 
light,  and  composing  from  them,  as  from  elements,  other  thoughts, 
each  containing  within  itself  the  principle  of  its  own  integrity. 
The  one  is  the  t6  Troteiv,  or  the  principle  of  synthesis,  and  has  for  its 
objects  those  forms  which  are  common  to  universal  nature  and 
existence  itself;  the  other  is  the  to  Xoyt'feiv,  or  principle  of  analysis, 
and  its  action  regards  the  relations  of  things  simply  as  relations; 
considering  thoughts,  not  in  their  integral  unity,  but  as  the  alge- 
braical representations  which  conduct  to  certain  general  results. 
Reason  is  the  enumeration  of  qualities  already  known;  imagina- 
tion is  the  perception  of  the  value  of  those  quantities,  both  sepa- 
rately and  as  a  whole.  Reason  respects  the  differences,  and 
imagination  the  similitudes  of  things.  Reason  is  to  imagination 
as  the  instrument  to  the  agent,  as  the  body  to  the  spirit,  as  the 
shadow  to  the  substance. 

Poetry,  in  a  general  sense,  may  be  defined  to  be  "the  expression 
of  the  imagination  "  :  and  poetry  is  connate  with  the  origin  of  man. 
Man  is  an  instrument  over  which  a  series  of  external  and  internal 
impressions  are  driven,  like  the  alternations  of  an  ever-changing 

307 


3o8  PERCY   BYSSHE  SHELLEY 

wind  over  an  i^olian  lyre,  which  move  it  by  their  motion  to  ever- 
changing  melody.     But  there  is  a  principle  within  the  human 
being,  and  perhaps  within  all  sentient  beings,  which  acts  other- 
wise than  in  the  lyre,  and  produces  not  melody  alone,  but  harmony, 
by  an  internal  adjustment  of  the  sounds  or  motions  thus  excited 
to  the  impressions  which  excite  them.     It  is  as  if  the  lyre  could 
accommodate  its  chords  to  the  motions  of  that  which  strikes  them, 
in  a  determined  proportion  of  sound;    even  as  the  musician  can 
accommodate  his  voice  to  the  sound  of  the  lyre.     A  child  at  play 
by  itself  will  express  its  delight  by  its  voice  and  motions;    and 
every  inflection  of  tone  and  every  gesture  will  bear  exact  relation 
to  a  corresponding  antitype  in  the  pleasurable  impressions  which 
awakened  it;    it  will  be  the  reflected  image  of  that  impression; 
and  as  the  lyre  trembles  and  sounds  after  the  wind  has  died  away, 
so  the  child  seeks,  by  prolonging  in  its  voice  and  motions  the  dura- 
tion of  the  effect,  to  prolong  also  a  consciousness  of  the  cause. 
In  relation  to  the  objects  which  delight  a  child,  these  expressions 
are  what  poetry  is  to  higher  objects.     The  savage  (for  the  savage 
is  to  ages  what  the  child  is  to  years)  expresses  the  emotions  pro- 
duced in  him  by  surrounding  objects  in  a  similar  manner;    and 
language  and  gesture,  together  with  plastic  or  pictorial  imitation, 
become  the  image  of  the  combined  effect  of  those  objects,  and  of 
his  apprehension  of  them.     Man  in  society,  with  all  his  passions 
and  his  pleasures,  next  becomes  the  object  of  the  passions  and 
pleasures  of  man;    an  additional  class  of  emotions  produces  an 
augmented  treasure  of  expressions;    and  language,  gesture,  and 
the  imitative  arts  become  at  once  the  representation  and  the  me- 
dium, the  pencil  and  the  picture,  the  chisel  and  the  statue,  the 
chord  and  the  harmony.     The  social  sympathies,  or  those  laws 
from  which,  as  from  its  elements,  society  results,  begin  to  develop 
themselves  from  the  moment  that  two  human  beings  coexist; 
the  future  is  contained  within  the  present,  as  the  plant  within  the 
seed :  and  equality,  diversity,  unity,  contrast,  mutual  dependence, 
become   the   principles  alone  capable  of  affording   the   motives 
according  to  which  the  will  of  a  social  being  is  determined  to  action, 
inasmuch  as  he  is  social;   and  constitute  pleasure  in  sensation, 
virtue  in    sentiment,  beauty  in  art,  truth  in   reasoning,  and  love 
in  the  intercourse  of  kind.      Hence  men,  even  in  the  infancy  of 
society,  observe  a  certain  order  in  their  words  and  actions,  distinct 
from  that  of   the   objects  and    the    impressions    represented    by 
them,  all    expression    being   subject  to    the    laws   of    that    from 


A   DEFENCE  OF  POETRY  309 

which  it  proceeds.  But  let  us  dismiss  those  more  general 
considerations  which  might  involve  an  inquiry  into  the  prin- 
ciples of  society  itself,  and  restrict  our  view  to  the  manner  in 
which  the  imagination  is  expressed  upon  its  forms. 

In  the  youth  of  the  world,  men  dance  and  sing  and   imitate 
natural  objects,  observing  in  these  actions,  as  in  all  others,  a 
certain  rhythm  or  order.     And,  although  all  men  observe  a  similar, 
they  observe  not  the  same  order,  in  the  motions  of  the  dance,  in  the 
melody  of  the  song,  in  the  combinations  of  language,  in  the  series 
of  their  imitations  of  natural  objects.     For  there   is  a  certain 
order  or  rhythm  belonging  to  each  of  these  classes  of  mimetic 
representation,  from  which  the  hearer  and  the  spectator  receive 
an  intenser  and  purer  pleasure  than  from  any  other :   the  sense  of 
an  approximation  to  this  order  has  been  called  taste  by  modern 
writers.     Every  man  in  the  infancy  of  art  observes  an  order  which 
approximates  more  or  less  closely  to  that  from  which  this  highest 
delight  results;    but  the  diversity  is  not  sufficiently  marked,  as 
that  its  gradations  should  be  sensible,  except  in  those  instances 
where  the  predominance  of  this  faculty  of  approximation  to  the 
beautiful  (for  so  we  may  be  permitted  to  name  the  relation  between 
this  highest  pleasure  and  its  cause)  is  very  great.     Those  in  whom 
it  exists  in  excess  are  poets,  in  the  most  universal  sense  of  the 
word;  and  the  pleasure  resulting  from  the  manner  in  which  they 
express  the  influence  of  society  or  nature  upon  their  own  minds, 
communicates  itself  to  others,  and  gathers  a  sort  of  reduplication 
from  that  community.     Their  language  is  vitally  metaphorical; 
that  is;  it  marks  the  before  unapprehended  relations  of  things  and 
perpetuates  their  apprehension,  until  the  words  which  represent 
them,   become,   through   time,   signs   for  portions   or  classes  of 
thoughts  instead  of  pictures  of  integral  thoughts ;   and  then,  if  no 
new  poets  should  arise  to  create  afresh  the  associations  which 
have  been  thus  disorganized,  language  will  be  dead  to  all  the  nobler 
purposes  of  human  intercourse.     These  similitudes  or  relations 
are  finely  said  by  Lord  Bacon  to  be  "the  same  footsteps  of  nature 
impressed  upon  the  various  subjects  of  the  world"*  —  and  he 
considers  the  faculty  which  perceives  them  as  the  storehouse  of 
axioms  common   to  all  knowledge.     In   the   infancy  of  society 
every  author  is  necessarily  a  poet,  because  language  itself  is  poetry; 
and  to  be  a  poet  is  to  apprehend  the  true  and  the  beautiful;   in  a 
word,  the  good  which  exists  in  the  relation  subsisting,  first  be- 

'^  De  Augment.     Scient.,  cap.  i,  lib.  iii. 


3IO  PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 

tween  existence  and  perception,  and  secondly  between  perception 
and  expression.  Every  original  language  near  to  its  source  is 
in  itself  the  chaos  of  a  cyclic  poem :  the  copiousness  of  lexicog- 
raphy and  the  distinctions  of  grammar  are  the  works  of  a  later 
age,  and  are  merely  the  catalogue  and  the  form  of  the  creations 
of  poetry. 

But  poets,  or  those  who  imagine  and  express  this  indestructible 
order,  are  not  only  the  authors  of  language  and  of  music,  of  the 
dance,  and  architecture,  and  statuary,  and  painting:  they  are 
the  institutors  of  laws,  and  the  founders  of  civil  society,  and  the 
inventors  of  the  arts  of  life,  and  the  teachers,  who  draw  into  a 
certain  propinquity  with  the  beautiful  and  the  true,  that  partial 
apprehension  of  the  agencies  of  the  invisible  world  which  is  called 
religion.  Hence  all  original  religions  are  allegorical,  or  suscep- 
tible of  allegory,  and,  like  Janus,  have  a  double  face  of  false  and 
true.  Poets,  according  to  the  circumstances  of  the  age  and  nation 
in  which  they  appeared,  were  called,  in  the  earlier  epochs  of  the 
world,  legislators,  or  prophets :  a  poet  essentially  comprises  and 
unites  both  these  characters.  For  he  not  only  beholds  intensely 
the  present  as  it  is,  and  discovers  those  laws  according  to  which 
present  things  ought  to  be  ordered,  but  he  beholds  the  future  in 
the  present,  and  his  thoughts  are  the  germs  of  the  flower  and  the 
fruit  of  latest  time.  Not  that  I  assert  poets  to  be  prophets  in 
the  gross  sense  of  the  word,  or  that  they  can  foretell  the  form  as 
surely  as  they  foreknow  the  spirit  of  events :  such  is  the  pretence 
of  superstition,  which  would  make  poetry  an  attribute  of  prophecy 
rather  than  prophecy  an  attribute  of  poetry.  A  poet  participates 
in  the  eternal,  the  infinite,  and  the  one;  as  far  as  relates  to  his 
conceptions,  time  and  place  and  number  are  not.  The  gram- 
matical forms  which  express  the  moods  of  time,  and  the  difference 
of  persons,  and  the  distinction  of  place,  are  convertible  with  respect 
to  the  highest  poetry  without  injuring  it  as  poetry;  and  the  cho-. 
ruses  of  .-Eschylus,  and  the  book  of  Job,  and  Dante's  Paradise, 
would  afford,  more  than  any  other  writings,  examples  of  this  fact, 
it  the  limits  of  this  essay  did  not  forbid  citation.  The  creations 
of  sculpture,  painting,  and  music  are  illustrations  still  more  de- 
cisive. 

Language,  colour,  form,  and  religious  and  civil  habits  of  action 
are  all  the  instruments  and  materials  of  poetry;  they  may  be 
called  poetry  by  that  figure  of  speech  which  considers  the  effect 
as  a  synonym  of  th^  cause.     But  poetry  in  a  more  restricted  sense 


A   DEFENCE  OF  POETRY.  JII 

expresses  those  arrangements  of  language,  and  especially  metrical 
language,  which  are  created  by  that  imperial  faculty,  whose 
throne  is  curtained  within  the  invisible  nature  of  man.  And 
this  springs  from  the  nature  itself  of  language,  which  is  a  more 
direct  representation  of  the  actions  and  passions  of  our  internal 
being,  and  is  susceptible  of  more  various  and  delicate  combina- 
tions than  colour,  form,  or  motion,  and  is  more  plastic  and  obedient 
to  the  control  of  that  faculty  of  which  it  is  the  creation.  For 
language  is  arbitrarily  produced  by  the  imagination,  and  has 
relation  to  thoughts  alone;  but  all  other  materials,  instruments, 
and  conditions  of  art  have  relations  among  each  other,  which 
limit  and  interpose  between  conception  and  expression.  The 
former  is  as  a  mirror  which  reflects,  the  latter  as  a  cloud  which 
enfeebles,  the  light  of  which  both  are  mediums  of  communica- 
tion. Hence  the  fame  of  sculptors,  painters,  and  musicians, 
although  the  intrinsic  powers  of  the  great  masters  of  these  arts  may 
yield  in  no  degree  to  that  of  those  who  have  employed  language 
as  the  hieroglyphic  of  their  thoughts,  has  never  equalled  that  of 
poets  in  the  restricted  sense  of  the  term;  as  two  performers  of 
equal  skill  will  produce  unequal  effects  from  a  guitar  and  a  harp. 
The  fame  of  legislators  and  founders  of  religions,  so  long  as  their 
institutions  last,  alone  seems  to  exceed  that  of  poets  in  the  restricted 
sense;  but  it  can  scarcely  be  a  question  whether,  if  we  deduct  the 
celebrity  which  their  flattery  of  the  gross  opinions  of  the  vulgar 
usually  conciliates,  together  with  that  which  belonged  to  them  in 
their  higher  character  of  poets,  any  excess  will  remain. 

We  have  thus  circumscribed  the  word  poetry  within  the  limits 
of  that  art  which  is  the  most  familiar  and  the  most  perfect  expres- 
sion of  the  faculty  itself.  It  is  necessary,  however,  to  make  the 
circle  still  narrower,  and  to  determine  the  distinction  between 
measured  and  unmeasured  language;  for  the  popular  division 
into  prose  and  verse  is  inadmissible  in  accurate  philosophy. 

Sounds  as  well  as  thoughts  have  relation  both  between  each 
other  and  towards  that  which  they  represent,  and  a  perception 
of  the  order  of  those  relations  has  always  been  found  connected 
with  a  perception  of  the  order  of  the  relations  of  thoughts.  Hence 
the  language  of  poets  has  ever  affected  a  certain  uniform  and 
harmonious  recurrence  of  sound,  without  which  it  were  not  poetry, 
and  which  is  scarcely  less  indispensable  to  the  communication 
of  its  influence  than  the  words  themselves,  without  reference  to 
that  peculiar  order.     Hence  the  vanity  of  translation;    it  were 


312  PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 

as  wise  to  cast  a  violet  into  a  crucible  that  you  might  discover 
the  formal  principle  of  its  colour  and  odour,  as  seek  to  transfuse 
from  one  language  into  another  the  creations  of  a  poet.  The 
plant  must  spring  again  from  its  seed,  or  it  will  bear  no  flower  — 
and  this  is  the  burthen  of  the  curse  of  Babel. 

An  observation  of  the  regular  mode  of  the  recurrence  of  har- 
mony in  the  language  of  poetical  minds,  together  with  its  relation 
to  music,  produced  metre,  or  a  certain  system  of  traditional  forms 
of  harmony  and  language.  Yet  it  is  by  no  means  essential  that 
a  poet  should  accommodate  his  language  to  this  traditional  form, 
so  that  the  harmony,  which  is  its  spirit,  be  observed.  The  prac- 
tice is  indeed  convenient  and  popular,  and  to  be  preferred,  es- 
pecially in  such  composition  as  includes  much  action :  but  every 
great  poet  must  inevitably  innovate  upon  the  example  of  his 
predecessors  in  the  exact  structure  of  his  peculiar  versification. 
The  distinction  between  poets  and  prose  writers  is  a  vulgar  error. 
The  distinction  between  philosophers  and  poets  has  been  antici- 
pated. Plato  was  essentially  a  poet  —  the  truth  and  splendour 
of  his  imagery,  and  the  melody  of  his  language,  are  the  most 
intense  that  it  is  possible  to  conceive.  He  rejected  the  measure 
of  the  epic,  dramatic,  and  lyrical  forms,  because  he  sought  to 
kindle  a  harmony  in  thoughts  divested  of  shape  and  action,  and 
he  forbore  to  invent  any  regular  plan  of  rhythm  which  would 
include,  under  determinate  forms,  the  varied  pauses  of  his  style. 
Cicero  sought  to  imitate  the  cadence  of  his  periods,  but  with  little 
success.  Lord  Bacon  was  a  poet.^  His  language  has  a  sweet  and 
majestic  rhythm,  which  satisfies  the  sense,  no  less  than  the  almost 
superhuman  wisdom  of  his  philosophy  satisfies  the  intellect;  it 
is  a  strain  which  distends,  and  then  bursts  the  circumference  of 
the  reader's  mind,  and  pours  itself  forth  together  with  it  into  the 
universal  element  with  which  it  has  perpetual  sympathy.  All 
the  authors  of  revolutions  in  opinion  are  not  only  necessarily 
poets  as  they  are  inventors,  nor  even  as  their  words  unveil  the 
permanent  analogy  of  things  by  images  which  participate  in 
the  life  of  truth;  but  as  their  periods  are  harmonious  and  rhyth- 
mical, and  contain  in  themselves  the  elements  of  verse;  being 
the  echo  of  the  eternal  music.  Nor  are  those  supreme  poets, 
who  have  employed  traditional  forms  of  rhythm  on  account  of 
the  form  and  action  of  their  subjects,  less  capable  of  perceiving 
and  teaching  the  truth  of  things,  than  those  who  have  omitted 

*  See  the  Filum  Labyrinlhi,  and  the  Essay  on  Death  particularly. 


A   DEFENCE  OF  POETRY  313 

that  form.  Shakespeare,  Dante,  and  Milton  (to  confine  our- 
selves to  modern  writers)  are  philosophers  of  the  very  loftiest 
power. 

A  poem  is  the  very  image  of  life  expressed  in  its  eternal  truth. 
There  is  this  difference  between  a  story  and  a  poem,  that  a  story 
is  a  catalogue  of  detached  facts,  which  have  no  other  connection 
than  time,  place,  circumstance,  cause  and  effect;  the  other  is  the 
creation  of  actions  according  to  the  unchangeable  forms  of  human 
nature,  as  existing  in  the  mind  of  the  Creator,  which  is  itself  the 
image  of  all  other  minds.  The  one  is  partial,  and  applies  only 
to  a  definite  period  of  time,  and  a  certain  combination  of  events 
which  can  never  again  recur ;  the  other  is  universal,  and  contains 
within  itself  the  germ  of  a  relation  to  whatever  motives  or  actions 
have  place  in  the  possible  varieties  of  human  nature.  Time, 
which  destroys  the  beauty  and  the  use  of  the  story  of  particular 
facts,  stripped  of  the  poetry  which  should  invest  them,  augments 
that  of  poetry,  and  forever  develops  new  and  wonderful  applica- 
tions of  the  eternal  truth  which  it  contains.  Hence  epitomes 
have  been  called  the  moths  of  just  history;  they  eat  out  the  poetry 
of  it.  A  story  of  particular  facts  is  as  a  mirror  which  obscures 
and  distorts  that  which  should  be  beautiful :  poetry  is  a  mirror 
which  makes  beautiful  that  which  is  distorted. 

The  parts  of  a  composition  may  be  poetical,  without  the  com- 
position as  a  whole  being  a  poem.  A  single  sentence  may  be 
considered  as  a  whole,  though  it  may  be  found  in  the  midst  of  a 
series  of  unassimilated  portions ;  a  single  word  even  may  be  a  spark 
of  inextinguishable  thought.  And  thus  all  the  great  historians, 
Herodotus,  Plutarch,  Livy,  were  poets;  and  although  the  plan 
of  these  writers,  especially  that  of  Livy,  restrained  them  from 
developing  this  faculty  in  its  highest  degree,  they  made  copious 
and  ample  amends  for  their  subjection  by  filling  all  the  interstices 
of  their  subjects  with  living  images. 

Having  determined  what  is  poetry,  and  who  are  poets,  let  us 
proceed  to  estimate  its  effects  upon  society. 

Poetry  is  ever  accompanied  with  pleasure :  all  spirits  on  which 
it  falls  open  themselves  to  receive  the  wisdom  which  is  mingled 
with  its  delight.  In  the  infancy  of  the  world,  neither  poets  them- 
selves nor  their  auditors  are  fully  aware  of  the  excellence  of  poetry : 
for  it  acts  in  a  divine  and  unapprehended  manner,  beyond  and 
above  consciousness;  and  it  is  reserved  for  future  generations 
to  contemplate  and  measure  the  mighty  cause  and  effect  in  all  the 


314  PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 

strength  and  splendour  of  their  union.  Even  in  modern  times, 
no  Hving  poet  ever  arrived  at  the  fulness  of  his  fame;  the  jury 
which  sits  in  judgment  upon  a  poet,  belonging  as  he  does  to  all 
time,  must  be  composed  of  his  peers:  it  must  be  impanelled  by 
Time  from  the  selectest  of  the  wise  of  many  generations.  A  poet 
is  a  nightingale,  who  sits  in  darkness  and  sings  to  cheer  its  own 
solitude  with  sweet  sounds;  his  auditors  are  as  men  entranced 
by  the  melody  of  an  unseen  musician,  who  feel  that  they  are  moved 
and  softened,  yet  know  not  whence  or  why.  The  poems  of  Homer 
and  his  contemporaries  were  the  delight  of  infant  Greece;  they 
were  the  elements  of  that  social  system  which  is  the  column  upon 
which  all  succeeding  civilization  has  reposed.  Homer  embodied 
the  ideal  perfection  of  his  age  in  human  character;  nor  can  we 
doubt  that  those  who  read  his  verses  were  awakened  to  an  ambi- 
tion of  becoming  like  to  Achilles,  Hector,  and  Ulysses :  the  truth 
and  beauty  of  friendship,  patriotism,  and  persevering  devotion  to 
an  object,  were  unveiled  to  the  depths  in  these  immortal  creations: 
the  sentiments  of  the  auditors  must  have  been  refined  and  enlarged 
by  a  sympathy  with  such  great  and  lovely  impersonations,  until 
from  admiring  they  imitated,  and  from  imitation  they  identified 
themselves  with  the  objects  of  their  admiration.  Nor  let  it  be 
objected  that  these  characters  are  remote  from  moral  perfection, 
and  that  they  can  by  no  means  be  considered  as  edifying  patterns 
for  general  imitation.  Every  epoch,  under  names  more  or  less 
specious,  has  deified  its  peculiar  errors;  Revenge  is  the  naked 
idol  of  the  worship  of  a  semi-barbarous  age;  and  Self-deceit  is 
the  veiled  image  of  unknown  evil,  before  which  luxury  and  satiety 
lie  prostrate.  But  a  poet  considers  the  vices  of  his  contemporaries 
as  the  temporary  dress  in  which  his  creations  must  be  arrayed,  and 
which  cover  without  concealing  the  eternal  proportions  of  their 
beauty.  An  epic  or  dramatic  personage  is  understood  to  wear 
them  around  his  soul,  as  he  may  the  ancient  armour  or  the  modern 
uniform  around  his  body;  whilst  it  is  easy  to  conceive  a  dress 
more  graceful  than  either.  The  beauty  of  the  internal  nature 
cannot  be  so  far  concealed  by  its  accidental  vesture  but  that  the 
spirit  of  its  form  shall  communicate  itself  to  the  very  disguise, 
and  indicate  the  shape  it  hides  from  the  manner  in  which  it  is 
worn.  A  majestic  form  and  graceful  motions  will  express  them- 
selves through  the  most  barbarous  and  tasteless  costume.  Few 
poets  of  the  highest  class  have  chosen  to  exhibit  the  beauty  of  their 
conceptions  in  its  naked  truth  and  splendour;   and  it  is  doubtful 


A    DEFENCE  OF  POETRY  315 

whether  the  alloy  of  costume,  habit,  etc.,  be  not  necessary  to 
temper  this  planetary  music  for  mortal  ears. 

The  whole  objection,  however,  of  the  immorality  of  poetry 
rests  upon  a  misconception  of  the  manner  in  which  poetry  acts 
to  produce  the  moral  improvement  of  man.  Ethical  science 
arranges  the  elements  which  poetry  has  created,  and  propounds 
schemes  and  proposes  examples  of  civil  and  domestic  life:  nor 
is  it  for  want  of  admirable  doctrines  that  men  hate,  and  despise, 
and  censure,  and  deceive,  and  subjugate  one  another.  But  poetry 
acts  in  another  and  diviner  manner.  It  awakens  and  enlarges  the 
mind  itself  by  rendering  it  the  receptacle  of  a  thousand  unappre- 
hended combinations  of  thought.  Poetry  lifts  the  veil  from  the 
hidden  beauty  of  the  world,  and  makes  familiar  objects  be  as  if 
they  were  not  familiar;  it  reproduces  all  that  it  represents,  and 
the  impersonations  clothed  in  its  Elysian  light  stand  thenceforward 
in  the  minds  of  those  who  have  once  contemplated  them  as  memo- 
rials of  that  gentle  and  exalted  content  which  extends  itself  over 
all  thoughts  and  actions  with  which  it  coexists.  The  great  secret 
of  morals  is  love;  or  a  going  out  of  our  nature,  and  an  identifica- 
tion of  ourselves  with  the  beautiful  which  exists  in  thought,  action, 
or  person,  not  our  own.  A  man,  to  be  greatly  good,  must  imagine 
intensely  and  comprehensively;  he  must  put  himself  in  the  place 
of  another  and  of  many  others;  the  pains  and  pleasures  of  his 
species  must  become  his  own.  The  great  instrument  of  moral 
good  is  the  imagination;  and  poetry  administers  to  the  effect  by 
acting  upon  the  cause.  Poetry  enlarges  the  circumference  of  the 
imagination  by  replenishing  it  with  thoughts  of  ever  new  delight, 
which  have  the  power  of  attracting  and  assimilating  to  their  own 
nature  all  other  thoughts,  and  which  form  new  intervals  and  inter- 
stices whose  void  forever  craves  fresh  food.  Poetry  strengthens 
the  faculty  which  is  the  organ  of  the  moral  nature  of  man,  in  the 
same  manner  as  exercise  strengthens  a  limb.  A  poet  therefore 
would  do  ill  to  embody  his  own  conceptions  of  right  and  wrong, 
which  are  usually  those  of  his  place  and  time,  in  his  poetical  crea- 
tions, which  participate  in  neither.  By  this  assumption  of  the 
inferior  office  of  interpreting  the  effect,  in  which  perhaps  after  all 
he  might  acquit  himself  but  imperfectly,  he  would  resign  a  glory 
in  a  participation  in  the  cause.  There  was  little  danger  that 
Homer,  or  any  of  the  eternal  poets,  should  have  so  far  misunder- 
stood themselves  as  to  have  abdicated  this  throne  of  their  widest 
dominion.     Those  in  whom  the  poetical  faculty,  though  great. 


3l6  PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 

is  less  intense,  as  Euripides,  Lucan,  Tasso,  Spenser,  have  fre- 
quently affected  a  moral  aim,  and  the  effect  of  their  poetry  is 
diminished  in  exact  proportion  to  the  degree  in  which  they  compel 
us  to  advert  to  this  purpose. 

Homer  and  the  cyclic  poets  were  followed  at  a  certain  interval 
by  the  dramatic  and  lyrical  poets  of  Athens,  who  flourished  con- 
temporaneously with  all  that  is  most  perfect  in  the  kindred  expres- 
sions of  the  poetical  faculty;  architecture,  painting,  music,  the 
dance,  sculpture,  philosophy,  and  we  may  add,  the  forms  of  civil 
life.  For  although  the  scheme  of  Athenian  society  was  deformed 
by  many  imperfections  which  the  poetry  existing  in  chivalry  and 
Christianity  has  erased  from  the  habits  and  institutions  of  modern 
Europe ;  yet  never  at  any  other  period  has  so  much  energy,  beauty, 
and  virtue  been  developed ;  never  was  blind  strength  and  stubborn 
form  so  disciplined  and  rendered  subject  to  the  will  of  man,  or 
that  will  less  repugnant  to  the  dictates  of  the  beautiful  and  the  true, 
as  during  the  century  which  preceded  the  death  of  Socrates.  Of 
no  other  epoch  in  the  history  of  our  species  have  we  records  and 
fragments  stamped  so  visibly  with  the  image  of  the  divinity  in 
man.  But  it  is  poetry  alone,  in  form,  in  action,  or  in  language, 
which  has  rendered  this  epoch  memorable  above  all  others,  and 
the  storehouse  of  examples  to  everlasting  time.  For  written 
poetry  existed  at  that  epoch  simultaneously  with  the  other  arts, 
and  it  is  an  idle  inquiry  to  demand  which  gave  and  which  received 
the  light,  which  all,  as  from  a  common  focus,  have  scattered  over 
the  darkest  periods  of  succeeding  time.  We  know  no  more  of 
cause  and  effect  than  a  constant  conjunction  of  events :  poetry 
is  ever  found  to  coexist  with  whatever  other  arts  contribute  to 
the  happiness  and  perfection  of  man.  I  appeal  to  what  has  already 
been  established  to  distinguish  between  the  cause  and  the  effect. 

It  was  at  the  period  here  adverted  to  that  the  drama  had  its 
birth;  and  however  a  succeeding  writer  may  have  equalled  or 
surpassed  those  few  great  specimens  of  the  Athenian  drama  which 
have  been  preserved  to  us,  it  is  inchsj^utable  that  the  art  itself 
never  was  understood  or  practised  according  to  the  true  philosophy 
of  it,  as  at  Athens.  For  the  Athenians  employed  language,  action, 
music,  painting,  the  dance,  and  religious  institutions  to  produce 
a  common  effect  in  the  representation  of  the  highest  idealisms 
of  passion  and  of  power;  each  division  in  the  art  was  made  perfect 
in  its  kind  by  artists  of  the  most  consummate  skill,  and  was  dis- 
ciplined into  a  beautiful  proportion  and  unity  one  towards  the 


A   DEFENCE  OF  POETRY  317 

other.  On  the  modern  stage  a  few  only  of  the  elements  capable 
of  expressing  the  image  of  the  poet's  conception  are  employed  at 
once.  We  have  tragedy  without  music  and  dancing;  and  music 
and  dancing  without  the  highest  impersonations  of  which  they 
are  the  fit  accompaniment,  and  both  without  religion  and  solem- 
nity. Religious  institution  has  indeed  been  usually  banished 
from  the  stage.  Our  system  of  divesting  the  actor's  face  of  a 
mask,  on  which  the  many  expressions  appropriate  to  his  dramatic 
character  might  be  moulded  into  one  permanent  and  unchanging 
expression,  is  favourable  only  to  a  partial  and  inharmonious 
effect;  it  is  fit  for  nothing  but  a  monologue,  where  all  the  atten- 
tion may  be  directed  to  some  great  master  of  ideal  mimicry.  The 
modern  practice  of  blending  comedy  with  tragedy,  though  liable 
to  great  abuse  in  point  of  practice,  is  undoubtedly  an  extension 
of  the  dramatic  circle;  but  the  comedy  should  be,  as  in  King 
Lear,  universal,  ideal,  and  sublime.  It  is  perhaps  the  interven- 
tion of  this  principle  which  determines  the  balance  in  favour  of 
King  Lear  against  the  Qidipus  Tyrannus  or  the  Agamemnon,  or, 
if  you  will,  the  trilogies  with  which  they  are  connected;  unless 
the  intense  power  of  the  choral  poetry,  especially  that  of  the  latter, 
should  be  considered  as  restoring  the  equilibrium.  King  Lear, 
if  it  can  sustain  this  comparison,  may  be  judged  to  be  the  most 
perfect  specimen  of  the  dramatic  art  existing  in  the  world;  in 
spite  of  the  narrow  conditions  to  which  the  poet  was  subjected 
by  the  ignorance  of  the  philosophy  of  the  drama  which  has  pre- 
vailed in  modern  Europe.  Calderon,  in  his  religious  Autos,  has 
attempted  to  fulfil  some  of  the  high  conditions  of  dramatic  repre- 
sentation neglected  by  Shakespeare;  such  as  the  establishing  a 
relation  between  the  drama  and  religion,  and  the  accommodating 
them  to  music  and  dancing;  but  he  omits  the  observation  of 
conditions  still  more  important,  and  more  is  lost  than  gained  by 
the  substitution  of  the  rigidly-defined  and  ever-repeated  idealisms 
of  a  distorted  superstition  for  the  living  impersonations  of  the 
truth  of  human  passion. 

But  I  digress.  —  The  connection  of  scenic  exhibitions  with  the 
improvement  or  corruption  of  the  manners  of  men  has  been  uni- 
versally recognized;  in  other  words,  the  presence  or  absence  of 
poetry  in  its  most  perfect  and  universal  form  has  been  found  to 
be  connected  with  good  and  evil  in  conduct  or  habit.  The  cor- 
ruption which  has  been  imputed  to  the  drama  as  an  effect,  begins 
when  the  poetry  employed  in  its  constitution  ends:    I  appeal  to 


3i8  PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 

the  history  of  manners  whether  the  periods  of  the  growth  of  the 
one  and  the  decHne  of  the  other  have  not  corresponded  with  an 
exactness  equal  to  any  example  of  moral  cause  and  effect. 

The  drama  at  Athens,  or  wheresoever  else  it  may  have  ap- 
proached to  its  perfection,  ever  coexisted  with  the  moral  and 
intellectual  greatness  of  the  age.  The  tragedies  of  the  Athenian 
poets  are  as  mirrors  in  which  the  spectator  beholds  himself,  under 
a  thin  disguise  of  circumstance,  stript  of  all  but  that  ideal  perfec- 
tion and  energy  which  every  one  feels  to  be  the  internal  type  of 
all  that  he  loves,  admires,  and  would  become.  The  imagination 
is  enlarged  by  a  sympathy  with  pains  and  passions  so  mighty 
that  they  distend  in  their  conception  the  capacity  of  that  by  which 
they  are  conceived;  the  good  affections  are  strengthened  by 
pity,  indignation,  terror,  and  sorrow;  and  an  exalted  calm  is 
prolonged  from  the  satiety  of  this  high  exercise  of  them  into  the 
tumult  of  familiar  life:  even  crime  is  disarmed  of  half  its  horror 
and  all  its  contagion  by  being  represented  as  the  fatal  consequence 
of  the  unfathomable  agencies  of  nature;  error  is  thus  divested  of 
its  wilfulness;  men  can  no  longer  cherish  it  as  the  creation  of 
their  choice.  In  a  drama  of  the  highest  order  there  is  little  food 
for  censure  or  hatred;  it  teaches  rather  self-knowledge  and  self- 
respect.  Neither  the  eye  nor  the  mind  can  see  itself,  unless 
reflected  upon  that  which  it  resembles.  The  drama,  so  long  as  it 
continues  to  express  poetry,  is  as  a  prismatic  and  many-sided 
mirror,  which  collects  the  brightest  rays  of  human  nature  and 
divides  and  reproduces  them  from  the  simplicity  of  these  elemen- 
tary forms,  and  touches  them  with  majesty  and  beauty,  and 
multiplies  all  that  it  reflects,  and  endows  it  with  the  power  of 
propagating  its  like  wherever  it  may  fall. 

But  in  ])eriods  of  the  decay  of  social  life,  the  drama  sympa- 
thizes with  that  decay.  Tragedy  becomes  a  cold  imitation  of  the 
form  of  the  great  masterpieces  of  antiquity,  divested  of  all  har- 
monious accompaniment  of  the  kindred  arts;  and  often  the  very 
form  misunderstood,  or  a  weak  attempt  to  teach  certain  doctrines, 
which  the  writer  considers  as  moral  truths ;  and  which  are  usually 
no  more  than  specious  flatteries  of  some  gross  vice  or  weakness 
with  which  the  author,  in  common  with  his  auditors,  are  infected. 
Hence  what  has  been  called  the  classical  and  domestic  drama. 
Addison's  Cato  is  a  specimen  of  the  one;  and  would  it  were  not 
superfluous  to  cite  examples  of  the  other!  To  such  purposes 
poetry  cannot  bs  mrle  subservient.     Poetry  is  a  sword  of  light- 


A    DEFENCE  OF  POETRY  319 

ning,  ever  unsheathed,  which  consumes  the  scabbard  that  would 
contain  it.  And  thus  we  observe  that  all  dramatic  writings  of 
this  nature  are  unimaginative  in  a  singular  degree;  they  affect 
sentiment  and  passion,  which,  divested  of  imagination,  are  other 
names  for  caprice  and  appetite.  The  period  in  our  own  history 
of  the  grossest  degradation  of  the  drama  is  the  reign  of  Charles  II., 
when  all  forms  in  which  poetry  had  been  accustomed  to  be  ex- 
pressed became  hymns  to  the  triumph  of  kingly  power  over  liberty 
and  virtue.  Milton  stood  alone  illuminating  an  age  unworthy 
of  him.  At  such  periods  the  calculating  principle  pervades  all 
the  forms  of  dramatic  exhibition,  and  poetry  ceases  to  be  expressed 
upon  them.  Comedy  loses  its  ideal  universality:  wit  succeeds 
to  humour;  we  laugh  from  self-complacency  and  triumph,  in- 
stead of  pleasure;  malignity,  sarcasm,  and  contempt  succeed  to 
sympathetic  merriment;  we  hardly  laugh,  but  we  smile.  Ob- 
scenity, which  is  ever  blasphemy  against  the  divine  beauty  in 
life,  becomes,  from  the  very  veil  which  it  assumes,  more  active 
if  less  disgusting:  it  is  a  monster  for  which  the  corruption  of 
society  forever  brings  forth  new  food,  which  it  devours  in  secret. 

The  drama  being  that  form  under  which  a  greater  number  of 
modes  of  expression  of  poetry  are  susceptible  of  being  combined 
than  any  other,  the  connection  of  poetry  and  social  good  is  more 
observable  in  the  drama  than  in  whatever  other  form.  And  it  is 
indisputable  that  the  highest  perfection  of  human  society  has 
ever  corresponded  with  the  highest  dramatic  excellence ;  and  that 
the  corruption  or  the  extinction  of  the  drama  in  a  nation  where 
it  has  once  flourished,  is  a  mark  of  a  corruption  of  manners,  and 
an  extinction  of  the  energies  which  sustain  the  soul  of  social  life. 
But,  as  Machiavelli  says  of  poHtical  institutions,  that  life  may 
be  preserved  and  renewed,  if  men  should  arise  capable  of  bring- 
ing back  the  drama  to  its  principles.  And  this  is  true  with  respect 
to  poetry  in  its  most  extended  sense :  all  language,  institution  and 
form,  require  not  only  to  be  produced,  but  to  be  sustained:  the 
office  and  character  of  a  poet  participates  in  the  divine  nature  as 
regards  providence,  no  less  than  as  regards  creation. 

Civil  war,  the  spoils  of  Asia,  and  the  fatal  predominance,  first 
of  the  Macedonian,  and  then  of  the  Roman  arms,  were  so  many 
symbols  of  the  extinction  or  suspension  of  the  creative  faculty  in 
Greece.  The  bucolic  writers,  who  found  patronage  under  the 
lettered  tyrants  of  Sicily  and  Egypt,  were  the  latest  representa- 
tives of  its  most  glorious  reign.     Their  poetry  is  intensely  melo- 


320  PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 

dious;  like  the  odour  of  the  tuberose,  it  overcomes  and  sickens 
the  spirit  with  excess  of  sweetness;  whilst  the  poetry  of  the  pre- 
ceding age  was  as  a  meadow-gale  of  June,  which  mingles  the 
fragrance  of  all  the  flowers  of  the  field,  and  adds  a  quickening 
and  harmonizing  spirit  of  its  own  which  endows  the  sense  with 
a  power  of  sustaining  its  extreme  delight.  The  bucolic  and 
erotic  delicacy  in  written  poetry  is  correlative  with  that  softness 
in  statuary,  music,  and  the  kindred  arts,  and  even  in  manners 
and  institutions,  which  distinguished  the  epoch  to  which  I  now 
refer.  Nor  is  it  the  poetical  faculty  itself,  or  any  misapplication 
of  it,  to  which  this  want  of  harmony  is  to  be  imputed.  An  equal 
sensibility  to  the  influence  of  the  senses  and  the  affections  is  to 
be  found  in  the  writings  of  Homer  and  Sophocles:  the  former, 
especially,  has  clothed  sensual  and  pathetic  images  with  irresisti- 
ble attractions.  Their  superiority  over  these  succeeding  writers 
consists  in  the  presence  of  those  thoughts  which  belong  to  the 
inner  faculties  of  our  nature,  not  in  the  absence  of  those  which 
are  connected  with  the  external :  their  incomparable  perfection 
consists  in  a  harmony  of  the  union  of  all.  It  is  not  what  the 
erotic  poets  have,  but  what  they  have  not,  in  which  their  imper- 
fection consists.  It  is  not  inasmuch  as  they  were  poets,  but 
inasmuch  as  they  were  not  poets,  that  they  can  be  considered 
with  any  plausibility  as  connected  with  the  corruption  of  their 
age.  Had  that  corruption  availed  so  as  to  extinguish  in  them 
the  sensibility  to  pleasure,  passion,  and  natural  scenery,  which 
is  imputed  to  them  as  an  imperfection,  the  last  triumph  of  evil 
would  have  been  achieved.  For  the  end  of  social  corruption  is 
to  destroy  all  sensibility  to  pleasure;  and,  therefore,  it  is  corrup- 
tion. It  begins  at  the  imagination  and  the  intellect  as  at  the 
core,  and  distributes  itself  thence  as  a  paralyzing  venom,  through 
the  affections  into  the  very  appetites,  until  all  become  a  torpid 
mass  in  which  hardly  sense  survives.  At  the  approach  of  such 
a  period,  poetry  ever  addresses  itself  to  those  faculties  which  are 
the  last  to  be  destroyed,  and  its  voice  is  heard,  like  the  footsteps 
of  Astra^a,  departing  from  the  world.  Poetr}'^  ever  communicates 
all  the  pleasure  which  men  are  capable  of  receiving:  it  is  ever 
still  the  light  of  life;  the  source  of  whatever  of  beautiful  or  gener- 
ous or  true  can  have  place  in  an  evil  time.  It  will  readily  be  con- 
fessed that  those  among  the  luxurious  citizens  of  Syracuse  and 
Alexandria,  who  were  delighted  with  the  poems  of  Theocritus, 
were  less  cold,  cruel,  and  sensual  than  the  remnant  of  their  tribe. 


A  DEFENCE  OF  POETRY  32 1 

But  corruption  must  utterly  have  destroyed  the  fabric  of  human 
society  before  poetry  can  ever  cease.  The  sacred  Hnks  of  that 
chain  have  never  been  entirely  disjointed,  which  descending 
through  the  minds  of  many  men  is  attached  to  those  great  minds, 
whence  as  from  a  magnet  the  invisible  effluence  is  sent  forth, 
which  at  once  connects,  animates,  and  sustains  the  life  of  all. 
It  is  the  faculty  which  contains  within  itself  the  seeds  at  once  of 
its  own  and  of  social  renovation.  And  let  us  not  circumscribe 
the  effects  of  the  bucolic  and  erotic  poetry  within  the  limits  of  the 
sensibility  of  those  to  whom  it  was  addressed.  They  may  have 
perceived  the  beauty  of  those  immortal  compositions,  simply  as 
fragments  and  isolated  portions :  those  who  are  more  finely  organ- 
ized, or,  born  in  a  happier  age,  may  recognize  them  as  episodes 
to  that  great  poem,  which  all  poets,  like  the  cooperating  thoughts 
of  one  great  mind,  have  built  up  since  the  beginning  of  the  world. 
The  same  revolutions  within  a  narrower  sphere  had  place  in 
ancient  Rome;  but  the  actions  and  forms  of  its  social  life  never 
seem  to  have  been  perfectly  saturated  with  the  poetical  element. 
The  Romans  appear  to  have  considered  the  Greeks  as  the  selectest 
treasuries  of  the  selectest  forms  of  manners  and  of  nature,  and 
to  have  abstained  from  creating  in  measured  language,  sculpture, 
music,  or  architecture  anything  which  might  bear  a  particular 
relation  to  their  own  condition,  whilst  it  should  bear  a  general 
one  to  the  universal  constitution  of  the  world.  But  we  judge  from 
partial  evidence,  and  we  judge  perhaps  partially.  Ennius,  Varro, 
Pacuvius,  and  Accius,  all  great  poets,  have  been  lost.  Lucretius 
is  in  the  highest,  and  Virgil  in  a  very  high  sense,  a  creator.  The 
chosen  delicacy  of  expressions  of  the  latter  are  as  a  mist  of  light 
which  conceal  from  us  the  intense  and  exceeding  truth  of  his 
conceptions  of  nature.  Livy  is  instinct  with  poetry.  Yet  Horace, 
Catullus,  Ovid,  and  generally  the  other  great  writers  of  the  Vir- 
gilian  age,  saw  man  and  nature  in  the  mirror  of  Greece.  The 
institutions  also,  and  the  religion  of  Rome,  were  less  poetical  than 
those  of  Greece,  as  the  shadow  is  less  vivid  than  the  substance. 
Hence  poetry  in  Rome  seemed  to  follow,  rather  than  accompany, 
the  perfection  of  political  and  domestic  society.  The  true  poetry 
of  Rome  lived  in  its  institutions;  for  whatever  of  beautiful,  true, 
and  majestic  they  contained,  could  have  sprung  only  from  the 
faculty  which  creates  the  order  in  which  they  consist.  The  life 
of  Camillus,  the  death  of  Regulus;  the  expectation  of  the  senators, 
in  their  godlike  state,  of  the  victorious  Gauls;   the  refusal  of  the 


322  PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 

republic  to  make  peace  with  Hannibal  after  the  battle  of  Cannag, 
were  not  the  consequences  of  a  refined  calculation  of  the  probable 
personal  advantage  to  result  from  such  a  rhythm  and  order  in 
the  shows  of  life,  to  those  who  were  at  once  the  poets  and  the  act- 
ors of  these  immortal  dramas.  The  imagination,  beholding  the 
beauty  of  this  order,  created  it  out  of  itself  according  to  its  own 
idea;  the  consequence  was  empire,  and  the  reward  ever-living 
fame.  These  things  are  not  the  less  poetry,  quia  carent  vate 
sacro}  They  are  the  episodes  of  that  cyclic  poem  written  by 
Time  upon  the  memories  of  men.  The  Past,  like  an  inspired 
rhapsodist,  fills  the  theatre  of  everlasting  generations  with  their 
harmony. 

At  length  the  ancient  system  of  religion  and  manners  had 
fulfilled  the  circle  of  its  revolutions.  And  the  world  would  have 
fallen  into  utter  anarchy  and  darkness,  but  that  there  were  found 
poets  among  the  authors  of  the  Christian  and  chivalric  systems 
of  manners  and  religion,  who  created  forms  of  opinion  and  action 
never  before  conceived;  which,  copied  into  the  imaginations  of 
men,  became  as  generals  to  the  bewildered  armies  of  their  thoughts. 
It  is  foreign  to  the  present  purpose  to  touch  upon  the  evil  produced 
by  these  systems :  except  that  we  protest,  on  the  ground  of  the 
principles  already  established,  that  no  portion  of  it  can  be  attri- 
buted to  the  poetry  they  contain. 

It  is  probable  that  the  poetry  of  Moses,  Job,  David,  Solomon, 
and  Isaiah  had  produced  a  great  effect  upon  the  mind  of  Jesus 
and  his  disciples.  The  scattered  fragments  preserved  to  us  by 
the  biographers  of  this  extraordinary  person  are  all  instinct  with 
the  most  vivid  poetry.  But  his  doctrines  seem  to  have  been 
quickly  distorted.  At  a  certain  period  after  the  prevalence  of  a 
system  of  opinions  founded  upon  those  promulgated  by  him, 
the  three  forms  into  which  Plato  had  distributed  the  faculties 
of  mind  underwent  a  sort  of  apotheosis,  and  became  the  object 
of  the  worship  of  the  civilized  world.  Here  it  is  to  be  confessed 
that  "Light  seems  to  thicken," 

"  And  the  crow  makes  wing  to  the  rooky  wood, 
Good  things  of  day  begin  to  droop  and  drowse, 
And  night's  black  agents  to  their  preys  do  rouse." 

But  mark  how  beautiful  an  order  has  s])rung  from  the  dust  and 
blood  of  this  fierce  chaos !   how  the  world,  as  from  a  resurrection, 

1  [Though  they  need  the  holy  prophet  to  express  them.] 


A    DEFENCE   OF  POETRY  323 

balancing  itself  on  the  golden  wings  of  knowledge  and  of  hope,  has 
reassumed  its  yet  unwearied  flight  into  the  heaven  of  time.  Listen 
to  the  music,  unheard  by  outward  ears,  which  is  as  a  ceaseless  and 
invisible  wind,  nourishing  its  everlasting  course  with  strength 
and  swiftness. 

The  poetry  in  the  doctrines  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  the  mythology 
and  institutions  of  the  Celtic  conquerors  of  the  Roman  empire, 
Gudived  the  darkness  and  the  convulsions  connected  with  their 
growth  and  victory,  and  blended  themselves  in  a  new  fabric  of 
manners  and  opinion.  It  is  an  error  to  impute  the  ignorance  of 
the  dark  ages  to  the  Christian  doctrines  or  the  predominance 
of  the  Cehic  nations.  Whatever  of  evil  their  agencies  may  have 
contained  sprang  from  the  extinction  of  the  poetical  principle,  con- 
nected with  the  progress  of  despotism  and  superstition.  Men, 
from  causes  too  intricate  to  be  here  discussed,  had  become  insen- 
sible and  selfish :  their  own  will  had  become  feeble,  and  yet  they 
were  its  slaves,  and  thence  the  slaves  of  the  will  of  others :  lust, 
fear,  avarice,  cruelty,  and  fraud  characterized  a  race  amongst 
whom  no  one  was  to  be  found  capable  of  creating  in  form,  lan- 
guage, or  institution.  The  moral  anomalies  of  such  a  state  of 
society  are  not  justly  to  be  charged  upon  any  class  of  events  imme- 
diately connected  with  them,  and  those  events  are  most  entided 
to  our  approbation  which  could  dissolve  it  most  expeditiously. 
It  is  unfortunate  for  those  who  cannot  distinguish  words  from 
thoughts,  that  many  of  these  anomalies  have  been  incorporated 
into  our  popular  religion. 

It  was  not  until  the  eleventh  century  that  the  effects  of  the 
poetry  of  the  Christian  and  chivalric  systems  began  to  manifest 
themselves.  The  principle  of  equality  had  been  discovered  and 
applied  by  Plato  in  his  Republic,  as  the  theoretical  rule  of  the 
mode  in  which  the  materials  of  pleasure  and  of  power  produced 
by  the  common  skill  and  labour  of  human  beings  ought  to  be 
distributed  among  them.  The  limitations  of  this  rule  were 
asserted  by  him  to  be  determined  only  by  the  sensibility  of  each, 
or  the  utility  to  result  to  all.  Plato,  following  the  doctrines  of 
Timaeus  and  Pythagoras,  taught  also  a  moral  and  intellectual 
system  of  doctrine,  comprehending  at  once  the  past,  the  present, 
and  the  future  condition  of  man.  Jesus  Christ  divulged  the 
sacred  and  eternal  truths  contained  in  these  views  to  mankind, 
and  Christianity,  in  its  abstract  purity,  became  the  exoteric  expres- 
sion of  the  esoteric  doctrines  of  the  poetry  and  wisdom  of  antiq- 


324  PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 

uity.  The  incorporation  of  the  Celtic  nations  with  the  exhausted 
population  of  the  south,  impressed  upon  it  the  figure  of  the  poetry 
existing  in  their  mythology  and  institutions.  The  result  was  a 
suni  of  the  action  and  reaction  of  all  the  causes  included  in  it; 
for  it  may  be  assumed  as  a  maxim  that  no  nation  or  religion  can 
supersede  any  other  without  incorporating  into  itself  a  portion 
of  that  which  it  supersedes.  The  abolition  of  personal  and  do- 
mestic slavery,  and  the  emancipation  of  women  from  a  great  part 
of  the  degrading  restraints  of  antiquity,  were  among  the  conse- 
quences of  these  events. 

The  abolition  of  personal  slavery  is  the  basis  of  the  highest 
political  hope  that  it  can  enter  into  the  mind  of  man  to  conceive. 
The  freedom  of  women  produced  the  poetry  of  sexual  love.  Love 
became  a  religion,  the  idols  of  whose  worship  were  ever  present. 
It  was  as  if  the  statues  of  Apollo  and  the  Muses  had  been  endowed 
with  life  and  motion,  and  had  walked  forth  among  their  worship- 
pers ;  so  that  earth  became  peopled  by  the  inhabitants  of  a  diviner 
world.  The  familiar  appearance  and  proceedings  of  life  became 
wonderful  and  heavenly,  and  a  paradise  was  created  as  out  of  the 
wrecks  of  Eden.  And  as  this  creation  itself  is  poetry,  so  its  crea- 
tors were  poets;  and  language  was  the  instrument  of  their  art: 
Galeotto  fii  il  libro,  e  chi  lo  scrisse}  The  Provencal  Trouveurs, 
or  inventors,  preceded  Petrarch,  whose  verses  are  as  spells,  which 
unseal  the  inmost  enchanted  fountains  of  the  delight  which  is  in 
the  grief  of  love.  It  is  impossible  to  feel  them  without  becoming 
a  portion  of  that  beauty  which  we  contemplate:  it  were  super- 
fluous to  explain  how  the  gentleness  and  the  elevation  of  mind 
connected  with  these  sacred  emotions  can  render  men  more  ami- 
able, more  generous  and  wise,  and  lift  them  out  of  the  dull  vapours 
of  the  little  world  of  self.  Dante  understood  the  secret  things 
of  love  even  more  than  Petrarch.  His  Vita  Nuova  is  an  inex- 
haustible fountain  of  purity  of  sentiment  and  language :  it  is  the 
idealized  history  of  that  period,  and  those  intervals  of  his  life 
which  were  dedicated  to  love.  His  apotheosis  of  Beatrice  in 
Paradise,  and  the  gradations  of  his  own  love  and  her  loveliness, 
by  which  as  by  steps  he  feigns  himself  to  have  ascended  to  the 
throne  of  the  Supreme  Cause,  is  the  most  glorious  imagination 
of  modern  poetry.  The  acutest  critics  have  justly  reversed  the 
judgment  of  the  vulgar,  and  the  order  of  the  great  acts  of  the 
Divine  Drama,  in  the  measure  of  the  admiration  which  they  accord 

'  [Galeotto  was  the  name  of  the  book,  and  he  who  wrote  it.] 


A   DEFENCE  OF  POETRY  325 

to  the  Hell,  Purgatory,  and  Paradise.  The  latter  is  a  perpetual 
hymn  of  everlasting  love.  Love,  which  found  a  worthy  poet  in 
Plato  alone  of  all  the  ancients,  has  been  celebrated  by  a  chorus 
of  the  greatest  writers  of  the  renovated  world;  and  the  music 
has  penetrated  the  caverns  of  society,  and  its  echoes  still  drown 
the  dissonance  of  arms  and  superstition.  At  successive  intervals, 
Ariosto,  Tasso,  Shakespeare,  Spenser,  Calderon,  Rousseau,  and 
the  great  writers  of  our  own  age,  have  celebrated  the  dominion  of 
love,  planting,  as  it  were,  trophies  in  the  human  mind  of  that 
sublimest  victory  over  sensuality  and  force.  The  true  relation 
borne  to  each  other  by  the  sexes  into  which  human  kind  is  dis- 
tributed has  become  less  misunderstood;  and  if  the  error  which 
confounded  diversity  with  inequality  of  the  powers  of  the  two 
sexes  has  been  partially  recognized  in  the  opinions  and  institu- 
tions of  modern  Europe,  we  owe  this  great  benefit  to  the  worship 
of  which  chivalry  was  the  law,  and  poets  the  prophets. 

The  poetry  of  Dante  may  be  considered  as  the  bridge  thrown 
over  the  stream  of  time,  which  unites  the  modern  and  ancient 
world.  The  distorted  notions  of  invisible  things  which  Dante 
and  his  rival  Milton  have  idealized  are  merely  the  mask  and  the 
mantle  in  which  these  great  poets  walk  through  eternity  enveloped 
and  disguised.  It  is  a  difficult  question  to  determine  how  far 
they  were  conscious  of  the  distinction  which  must  have  subsisted 
in  their  minds  between  their  own  creeds  and  that  of  the  people. 
Dante  at  least  appears  to  wish  to  mark  the  full  extent  of  it  by 
placing  Rhipasus,  whom  Virgil  calls  justissimus  iinus,^  in  Paradise, 
and  observing  a  most  heretical  caprice  in  his  distribution  of  rewards 
and  punishments.  And  Milton's  poem  contains  within  itself 
a  philosophical  refutation  of  that  system,  of  which,  by  a  strange 
and  natural  antithesis,  it  has  been  a  chief  popular  support.  Noth- 
ing can  exceed  the  energy  and  magnificence  of  the  character  of 
Satan  as  expressed  in  Paradise  Lost.  It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose 
that  he  could  ever  have  been  intended  for  the  popular  personi- 
fication of  evil.  Implacable  hate,  patient  cunning,  and  a  sleepless 
refinement  of  device  to  inflict  the  extremest  anguish  on  an  enemy, 
these  things  are  evil;  and,  although  venial  in  a  slave,  are  not  to 
be  forgiven  in  a  tyrant ;  although  redeemed  by  much  that  ennobles 
his  defeat  in  one  subdued,  are  marked  by  all  that  dishonours  his 
conquest  in  the  victor.  Milton's  Devil  as  a  moral  being  is  as  far 
superior  to  his  God  as  one  who  perseveres  in  some  purpose  which 

'  [A  mr.n  most  Just.] 


326  PERCY   BYSSHE  SHELLEY 

he  has  conceived  to  be  excellent  in  spite  of  adversity  and  torture, 
is  to  one  who  in  the  cold  security  of  undoubted  triumph  inflicts 
the  most  horrible  revenge  upon  his  enemy,  not  from  any  mistaken 
notion  of  inducing  him  to  repent,  of  a  perseverance  in  enmity, 
but  with  the  alleged  design  of  exasperating  him  to  deserve  new 
torments.  Milton  has  so  far  violated  the  popular  creed  (if  this 
shall  be  judged  to  be  a  violation)  as  to  have  alleged  no  superiority 
of  moral  virtue  to  his  God  over  his  Devil.  And  this  bold  neglect 
of  a  direct  moral  purpose  is  the  most  decisive  proof  of  the  su- 
premacy of  Milton's  genius.  He  mingled,  as  it  were,  the  elements 
of  human  nature  as  colours  upon  a  single  pallet,  and  arranged 
them  in  the  composition  of  his  great  picture  according  to  the  laws 
of  epic  truth;  that  is,  according  to  the  laws  of  that  principle  by 
which  a  series  of  actions  of  the  external  universe  and  of  intelligent 
and  ethical  beings  is  calculated  to  excite  the  sympathy  of  succeed- 
ing generations  of  mankind.  The  Divina  Commedia  and  Para- 
dise Lost  have  conferred  upon  modern  mythology  a  systematic 
form;  and  when  change  and  time  shall  have  added  one  more 
superstition  to  the  mass  of  those  which  have  arisen  and  decayed 
upon  the  earth,  commentators  will  be  learnedly  employed  in 
elucidating  the  religion  of  ancestral  Europe,  only  not  utterly 
forgotten  because  it  will  have  been  stamped  with  the  eternity  of 
genius. 

Homer  was  the  first  and  Dante  the  second  epic  poet:  that  is, 
the  second  poet,  the  series  of  whose  creations  bore  a  defined  and 
intelligible  relation  to  the  knowledge  and  sentiment  and  religion 
of  the  age  in  which  he  lived,  and  of  the  ages  which  followed  it, 
developing  itself  in  correspondence  with  their  development.  For 
Lucretius  had  limed  the  wings  of  his  swift  spirit  in  the  dregs  of 
the  sensible  world;  and  Virgil,  with  a  modesty  that  ill  became 
his  genius,  had  affected  the  fame  of  an  imitator,  even  whilst  he 
created  anew  all  that  he  copied;  and  none  among  the  flock  of 
mock-birds,  though  their  notes  were  sweet,  Apollonius  Rhodius, 
Quintus  Calaber,  Nonnus,  Lucan,  Statius,  or  Claudian,  have 
sought  even  to  fulfil  a  single  condition  of  epic  truth.  Milton 
was  the  third  epic  poet.  For  if  the  title  of  epic  in  its  highest  sense 
be  refused  to  the  jEncid,  still  less  can  it  be  conceded  to  the  Orlando 
Furioso,  the  Gerusalemme  Liberata,  the  Liisiad,  or  the  Fairy 
Queen. 

Dante  and  ]Milton  were  both  deeply  penetrated  with  the  ancient 
religion  of  the  civilized  world;  and  its  spirit  exists  in  their  poetry 


A    DEFENCE  OF  POETRY  327 

probably  in  the  same  proportion  as  its  forms  survived  in  the  unre- 
formed  worship  of  modern  Europe.  The  one  preceded  and  the 
other  followed  the  Reformation  at  almost  equal  intervals.  Dante 
was  the  first  religious  reformer,  and  Luther  surpassed  him  rather 
in  the  rudeness  and  acrimony  than  in  the  boldness  of  his  censures 
of  papal  usurpation.  Dante  was  the  first  awakener  of  entranced 
Europe;  he  created  a  language,  in  itself  music  and  persuasion, 
out  of  a  chaos  of  inharmonious  barbarisms.  He  was  the  congre- 
gator  of  those  great  spirits  who  presided  over  the  resurrection  of 
learning;  the  Lucifer  of  that  starry  flock  which  in  the  thirteenth 
century  shone  forth  from  republican  Italy,  as  from  a  heaven,  into 
the  darkness  of  the  benighted  world.  His  very  words  are  instinct 
with  spirit;  each  is  as  a  spark,  a  burning  atom  of  inextinguishable 
thought;  and  many  yet  lie  covered  in  the  ashes  of  their  birth, 
and  pregnant  with  the  lightning  which  has  yet  found  no  con- 
ductor. All  high  poetry  is  infinite;  it  is  as  the  first  acorn,  which 
contained  all  oaks  potentially.  Veil  after  veil  may  be  undrawn, 
and  the  inmost  naked  beauty  of  the  meaning  never  exposed.  A 
great  poem  is  a  fountain  forever  overflowing  with  the  waters  of 
wisdom  and  delight;  and  after  one  person  and  one  age  has  ex- 
hausted all  its  divine  eiSuence  which  their  peculiar  relations 
enable  them  to  share,  another  and  yet  another  succeeds,  and 
new  relations  are  ever  developed,  the  source  of  an  unforeseen  and 
an  unconceived  delight. 

The  age  immediately  succeeding  to  that  of  Dante,  Petrarch, 
and  Boccaccio  was  characterized  by  a  revival  of  painting,  sculp- 
ture, and  architecture.  Chaucer  caught  the  sacred  inspiration, 
and  the  superstructure  of  English  literature  is  based  upon  the 
materials  of  Italian  invention. 

But  let  us  not  be  betrayed  from  a  defence  into  a  critical  history 
of  poetry  and  its  influence  on  society.  Be  it  enough  to  have 
pointed  out  the  effects  of  poets,  in  the  large  and  true  sense  of  the 
word,  upon  their  own  and  all  succeeding  times. 

But  poets  have  been  challenged  to  resign  the  civic  crown  to 
reasoners  and  mechanists  on  another  plea.  It  is  admitted  that 
the  exercise  of  the  imagination  is  most  delightful,  but  it  is  alleged 
that  that  of  reason  is  more  useful.  Let  us  examine,  as  the  grounds 
of  this  distinction,  what  is  here  meant  by  utility.  Pleasure  or 
good,  in  a  general  sense,  is  that  which  the  consciousness  of  a  sen- 
sitive and  intelligent  being  seeks,  and  in  which,  when  found,  it 
acquiesces.     There  are  two  kinds  of  pleasure,  one  durable,  uni- 


328  PERCY   BYSSHE   SHELLEY 

versal,  and  permanent ;  the  other  transitory  and  particular. 
UtiHty  may  either  express  the  means  of  producing  the  former  or 
the  latter.  In  the  former  sense,  whatever  strengthens  and  puri- 
fies the  affections,  enlarges  the  imagination,  and  adds  spirit  to 
sense,  is  useful.  But  a  narrower  meaning  may  be  assigned  to  the 
word  utility,  confining  it  to  express  that  which  banishes  the  impor- 
tunity of  the  wants  of  our  animal  nature,  the  surrounding  men 
with  security  of  life,  the  dispersing  the  grosser  delusions  of  super- 
stition, and  the  conciliating  such  a  degree  of  mutual  forbearance 
among  men  as  may  consist  with  the  motives  of  personal  advan- 
tage. 

Undoubtedly  the  promoters  of  utility,  in  this  limited  sense, 
have  their  appointed  ofSce  in  society.  They  follow  the  footsteps 
of  poets,  and  copy  the  sketches  of  their  creations  into  the  book 
of  common  life.  They  make  space,  and  give  time.  Their  exer- 
tions are  of  the  highest  value,  so  long  as  they  confine  their  adminis- 
tration of  the  concerns  of  the  inferior  powers  of  our  nature  within 
the  limits  due  to  the  superior  ones.  But  whilst  the  sceptic  destroys 
gross  superstitions,  let  him  spare  to  deface,  as  some  of  the  French 
writers  have  defaced,  the  eternal  truths  charactered  upon  the 
imaginations  of  men.  Whilst  the  mechanist  abridges,  and  the 
political  economist  combines  labour,  let  them  beware  that  their 
speculations,  for  want  of  correspondence  with  those  first  prin- 
ciples which  belong  to  the  imagination,  do  not  tend,  as  they  have 
in  modern  England,  to  exasperate  at  once  the  extremes  of  luxury 
and  want.  They  have  exemplified  the  saying,  "To  him  that 
hath,  more  shall  be  given;  and  from  him  that  hath  not,  the  little 
that  he  hath  shall  be  taken  away."  The  rich  have  become  richer, 
and  the  poor  have  become  poorer;  and  the  vessel  of  the  state  is 
driven  between  the  Scylla  and  Charybdis  of  anarchy  and  des- 
potism. Such  are  the  effects  which  must  ever  flow  from  an  un- 
mitigated exercise  of  the  calculating  faculty. 

It  is  difficult  to  define  pleasure  in  its  highest  sense;  the  defini- 
tion involving  a  number  of  apparent  paradoxes.  For,  from  an 
inexplicable  defect  of  harmony  in  the  constitution  of  human  nature, 
the  pain  of  the  inferior  is  frequently  connected  with  the  pleasures 
of  the  superior  portions  of  our  being.  Sorrow,  terror,  anguish, 
despair  itself,  are  often  the  chosen  expressions  of  an  approxima- 
tion to  the  highest  good.  Our  sympathy  in  tragic  fiction  depends 
on  this  principle;  tragedy  delights  by  affording  a  shadow  of  the 
pleasure  which  exists  in  pain.     This  is  the  source  also  of  the 


A    DEFENCE   OF  POETRY  329 

melancholy  which  is  inseparable  from  the  sweetest  melody.  The 
pleasure  that  is  in  sorrow  is  sweeter  than  the  pleasure  of  pleasure 
itself.  And  hence  the  saying,  "It  is  better  to  go  to  the  house  of 
mourning  than  to  the  house  of  mirth."  Not  that  this  highest 
species  of  pleasure  is  necessarily  linked  with  pain.  The  delight 
of  love  and  friendship,  the  ecstasy  of  the  admiration  of  nature, 
the  joy  of  the  perception,  and  still  more  of  the  creation  of  poetry, 
is  often  wholly  unalloyed. 

The  production  and  assurance  of  pleasure  in  this  highest  sense 
is  true  utility.  Those  who  produce  and  preserve  this  pleasure 
are  poets  or  poetical  philosophers. 

The  exertions  of  Locke,  Hume,  Gibbon,  Voltaire,  Rousseau,^ 
and  their  disciples,  in  favour  of  oppressed  and  deluded  humanity, 
are  entitled  to  the  gratitude  of  mankind.  Yet  it  is  easy  to  calcu- 
late the  degree  of  moral  and  intellectual  improvement  which  the 
world  would  have  exhibited  had  they  never  lived.  A  little  more 
nonsense  would  have  been  talked  for  a  century  or  two;  and 
perhaps  a  few  more  men,  women,  and  children  burnt  as  heretics. 
We  might  not  at  this  moment  have  been  congratulating  each  other 
on  the  abolition  of  the  Inquisition  in  Spain.  But  it  exceeds  all 
imagination  to  conceive  what  would  have  been  the  moral  condi- 
tion of  the  world  if  neither  Dante,  Petrarch,  Boccaccio,  Chaucer, 
Shakespeare,  Calderon,  Lord  Bacon,  nor  Milton  had  ever  existed; 
if  Raphael  and  Michael  Angelo  had  never  been  born;  if  the 
Hebrew  poetry  had  never  been  translated ;  if  a  revival  of  the  study 
of  Greek  literature  had  never  taken  place;  if  no  monuments  of 
ancient  sculpture  had  been  handed  down  to  us;  and  if  the  poetry 
of  the  religion  of  the  ancient  world  had  been  extinguished  together 
with  its  belief.  The  human  mind  could  never,  except  by  the 
intervention  of  these  excitements,  have  been  awakened  to  the 
invention  of  the  grosser  sciences,  and  that  application  of  analytical 
reasoning  to  the  aberrations  of  society,  which  it  is  now  attempted 
to  exalt  over  the  direct  expression  of  the  inventive  and  creative 
faculty  itself. 

We  have  more  moral,  political,  and  historical  wisdom  than  we 
know  how  to  reduce  into  practice;  we  have  more  scientific  and 
economical  knowledge  than  can  be  accommodated  to  the  just  dis- 
tribution of  the  produce  which  it  multiplies.  The  poetry  in  these 
systems  of  thought  is  concealed  by  the  accumulation  of  facts  and 

'  Although  Rousseau  has  been  thus  classed,  he  was  essentially  a  poet.  The 
others,  even  Voltaire,  were  mere  reasoners. 


330  PERCY   BY S SHE  SHELLEY 

calculating  processes.  There  is  no  want  of  knowledge  respect- 
ing what  is  wisest  and  best  in  morals,  government,  and  political 
economy,  or,  at  least,  what  is  wiser  and  better  than  what  men  now 
practise  and  endure.  But  we  let  "/  dare  not  wait  upon  /  would, 
like  the  poor  cat  in  the  adage."  We  want  the  creative  faculty  to 
imagine  that  which  we  know;  we  want  the  generous  impulse 
to  act  that  which  we  imagine;  we  want  the  poetry  of  life:  our 
calculations  have  outrun  conception;  we  have  eaten  more  than 
we  can  digest.  The  cultivation  of  those  sciences  which  have  en- 
larged the  limits  of  the  empire  of  man  over  the  external  world, 
has,  for  want  of  the  poetical  faculty,  proportionally  circumscribed 
those  of  the  internal  world;  and  man,  having  enslaved  the  ele- 
ments, remains  himself  a  slave.  To  what  but  a  cultivation  of  the 
mechanical  arts  in  a  degree  disproportioned  to  the  presence  of  the 
creative  faculty,  which  is  the  basis  of  all  knowledge,  is  to  be 
attributed  the  abuse  of  all  invention  for  abridging  and  combining 
labour,  to  the  exasperation  of  the  inequality  of  mankind  ?  From 
what  other  cause  has  it  arisen  that  the  discoveries  which  should 
have  lightened  have  added  a  weight  to  the  curse  imposed  on  Adam  ? 
Poetry,  and  the  principle  of  Self,  of  which  money  is  the  visible 
incarnation,  are  the  God  and  Mammon  of  the  world. 

The  functions  of  the  poetical  faculty  are  twofold :  by  one  it 
creates  new  materials  of  knowledge,  and  power,  and  pleasure; 
by  the  other  it  engenders  in  the  mind  a  desire  to  reproduce  and 
arrange  them  according  to  a  certain  rhythm  and  order  which 
may  be  called  the  beautiful  and  the  good.  The  cultivation  of 
poetry  is  never  more  to  be  desired  than  at  periods  when,  from 
an  excess  of  the  selfish  and  calculating  principle,  the  accumulation 
of  the  materials  of  external  life  exceeds  the  quantity  of  the  power 
of  assimilating  them  to  the  internal  laws  of  human  nature.  The 
body  has  then  become  too  unwieldy  for  that  which  animates 
it. 

Poetry  is  indeed  something  divine.  It  is  at  once  the  centre  and 
circumference  of  knowledge;  it  is  that  which  comprehends  all 
science,  and  that  to  which  all  science  must  be  referred.  It  is 
at  the  same  time  the  root  and  blossom  of  all  other  systems  of 
thought;  it  is  that  from  which  all  spring,  and  that  which  adorns 
all;  and  that  which,  if  blighted,  denies  the  fruit  and  the  seed,  and 
withholds  from  the  barren  world  the  nourishment  and  the  suc- 
cession of  the  scions  of  the  tree  of  life.  It  is  the  perfect  and  con- 
summate surface  and  bloom  of  all  things;    it  is  as  the  odour  and 


A    DEFENCE  OF  POETRY  331 

the  colour  of  the  rose  to  the  texture  of  the  elements  which  compose 
it,  as  the  form  and  splendour  of  unfaded  beauty  to  the  secrets  of 
anatomy  and  corruption.  What  were  virtue,  love,  patriotism, 
friendship  —  what  were  the  scenery  of  this  beautiful  universe 
which  we  inhabit;  what  were  our  consolations  on  this  side  of  the 
grave  —  and  what  were  our  aspirations  beyond  it,  if  poetry  did 
not  ascend  to  bring  light  and  fire  from  those  eternal  regions  where 
the  owl-winged  faculty  of  calculation  dare  not  ever  soar  ?  Poetry 
is  not  like  reasoning,  a  power  to  be  exerted  according  to  the  deter- 
mination of  the  will.  A  man  cannot  say,  "I  will  compose  poetry." 
The  greatest  poet  even  cannot  say  it;  for  the  mind  in  creation 
is  as  a  fading  coal,  which  some  invisible  influence,  like  an  incon- 
stant wind,  awakens  to  transitory  brightness;  this  power  arises 
from  within,  like  the  colour  of  a  flower  which  fades  and  changes 
as  it  is  developed,  and  the  conscious  portions  of  our  natures  are 
unprophetic  either  of  its  approach  or  its  departure.  Could  this 
influence  be  durable  in  its  original  purity  and  force,  it  is  impossible 
to  predict  the  greatness  of  the  results;  but  when  composition 
begins,  inspiration  is  already  on  the  decline,  and  the  most  glo- 
rious poetry  that  has  ever  been  communicated  to  the  world  is 
probably  a  feeble  shadow  of  the  original  conceptions  of  the  poet. 
I  appeal  to  the  greatest  poets  of  the  present  day  whether  it  is  not 
an  error  to  assert  that  the  finest  passages  of  poetry  are  produced 
by  labour  and  study.  The  toil  and  the  delay  recommended  by 
critics  can  be  justly  interpreted  to  mean  no  more  than  a  careful 
observation  of  the  inspired  moments,  and  an  artificial  connection 
of  the  spaces  between  their  suggestions  by  the  intermixture  of 
conventional  expressions ;  a  necessity  only  imposed  by  the  limited- 
ness  of  the  poetical  faculty  itself :  for  Milton  conceived  the  Para- 
dise Lost  as  a  whole  before  he  executed  it  in  portions.  We  have 
his  own  authority  also  for  the  muse  having  "dictated"  to  him  the 
"unpremeditated  song."  And  let  this  be  an  answer  to  those  who 
would  allege  the  fifty-six  various  readings  of  the  first  line  of  the 
Orlando  Fiirioso.  Compositions  so  produced  are  to  poetry  what 
mosaic  is  to  painting.  This  instinct  and  intuition  of  the  poetical 
faculty  is  still  more  observable  in  the  plastic  and  pictorial  arts; 
a  great  statue  or  picture  grows  under  the  power  of  the  artist  as 
a  child  in  the  mother's  womb ;  and  the  very  mind  which  directs 
the  hands  in  formation  is  incapable  of  accounting  to  itself  for  the 
origin,  the  gradations,  or  the  media  of  the  process. 

Poetry  is  the  record  of  the  best  and  happiest  moments  of  the 


332  PERCY   BYSSHE  SHELLEY 

happiest  and  best  minds.  We  are  aware  of  evanescent  visitations 
of  thought  and  feeling  sometimes  associated  with  place  or  person, 
sometimes  regarding  our  own  mind  alone,  and  always  arising 
unforeseen  and  departing  unbidden,  but  elevating  and  delightful 
beyond  all  expression :  so  that  even  in  the  desire  and  the  regret 
they  leave,  there  cannot  but  be  pleasure,  participating  as  it  does 
in  the  nature  of  its  object.  It  is,  as  it  were,  the  interpenetration 
of  a  diviner  nature  through  our  own;  but  its  footsteps  are  like 
those  of  a  wind  over  the  sea,  which  the  coming  calm  erases,  and 
whose  traces  remain  only  as  on  the  wrinkled  sands  which  paves 
it.  These  and  corresponding  conditions  of  being  are  experienced 
principally  by  those  of  the  most  delicate  sensibility  and  the  most 
enlarged  imagination;  and  the  state  of  mind  produced  by  them 
is  at  war  with  every  base  desire.  The  enthusiasm  of  virtue,  love, 
patriotism,  and  friendship  is  essentially  linked  with  such  emotions; 
and  whilst  they  last,  self  appears  as  what  it  is,  an  atom  to  a  uni- 
verse. Poets  are  not  only  subject  to  these  experiences  as  spirits 
of  the  most  refined  organization,  but  they  can  colour  all  that  they 
combine  with  the  evanescent  hues  of  this  ethereal  world ;  a  word, 
a  trait  in  the  representation  of  a  scene  or  a  passion  -will  touch  the 
enchanted  chord,  and  reanimate,  in  those  who  have  ever  experi- 
enced these  emotions,  the  sleeping,  the  cold,  the  buried  image 
of  the  past.  Poetry  thus  makes  immortal  all  that  is  best  and 
most  beautiful  in  the  world;  it  arrests  the  vanishing  apparitions 
which  haunt  the  interlunations  of  life,  and  veiling  them,  or  in 
language  or  in  form,  sends  them  forth  among  mankind,  bearing 
sweet  news  of  kindred  joy  to  those  with  whom  their  sisters  abide  — 
abide,  because  there  is  no  portal  of  exi)rcssion  from  the  caverns 
of  the  spirit  which  they  inhajjit  into  the  universe  of  things.  Poetry 
redeems  from  decay  the  visitations  of  the  divinity  in  man. 

Poetry  turns  all  things  to  loveliness ;  it  exalts  the  beauty  of  that 
which  is  most  beautiful,  and  it  adds  beauty  to  that  which  is  most 
deformed;  it  marries  exultation  and  horror,  grief  and  pleasure, 
eternity  and  change;  it  subdues  to  union  under  its  light  yoke 
all  irreconcilable  things.  It  transmutes  all  that  it  touches,  and 
every  form  moving  within  the  radiance  of  its  presence  is  changed 
by  wondrous  sympathy  to  an  incarnation  of  the  spirit  which  it 
breathes :  its  secret  alchemy  turns  to  potable  gold  the  poisonous 
waters  which  flow  from  death  through  life;  it  strips  the  veil  of 
familiarity  from  the  world,  and  lays  bare  the  naked  and  sleeping 
beauty,  which  is  the  spirit  of  its  forms. 


A   DEFENCE  OF  POETRY  T,;^^ 

All  things  exist  as  they  are  perceived :  at  least  in  relation  to  the 
percipient. 

"  The  mind  is  in  its  own  place,  and  of  itself 
Can  make  a  Heav'n  of  Hell,  a  Hell  of  Hcav'n." 

But  poetry  defeats  the  curse  which  binds  us  to  be  subjected  to 
the  accident  of  surrounding  impressions.  And  whether  it  spreads 
its  own  figured  curtain,  or  withdraws  life's  dark  veil  from  before 
the  scene  of  things,  it  equally  creates  for  us  a  being  within  our 
being.  It  makes  us  the  inhabitants  of  a  world  to  which  the  famil- 
iar world  is  a  chaos.  It  reproduces  the  common  universe  of  which 
we  are  portions  and  percipients,  and  it  purges  from  our  inward 
sight  the  film  of  familiarity  which  obscures  from  us  the  wonder 
of  our  being.  It  compels  us  to  feel  that  which  we  perceive,  and 
to  imagine  that  which  we  know.  It  creates  anew  the  universe, 
after  it  has  been  annihilated  in  our  minds  by  the  recurrence  of 
impressions  blunted  by  reiteration.  It  justifies  the  bold  and 
true  words  of  Tasso :  Non  merita  nome  di  creatore,  se  non  Iddio 
ed  il  Poeta} 

A  poet,  as  he  is  the  author  to  others  of  the  highest  wisdom, 
pleasure,  virtue,  and  glory,  so  he  ought  personally  to  be  the  hap- 
piest, the  best,  the  wisest,  and  the  most  illustrious  of  men.  As  to 
his  glory,  let  time  be  challenged  to  declare  whether  the  fame  of 
any  other  institutor  of  human  life  be  comparable  to  that  of  a  poet. 
That  he  is  the  wisest,  the  happiest,  and  the  best,  inasmuch  as  he 
is  a  poet,  is  equally  incontrovertible :  the  greatest  poets  have  been 
men  of  the  most  spotless  virtue,  of  the  most  consummate  prudence, 
and,  if  we  would  look  into  the  interior  of  their  lives,  the  most 
fortunate  of  men:  and  the  exceptions,  as  they  regard  those  who 
possessed  the  poetic  faculty  in  a  high  yet  inferior  degree,  will  be 
found  on  consideration  to  confine  rather  than  destroy  the  rule. 
Let  us  for  a  moment  stoop  to  the  arbitration  of  popular  breath, 
and  usurping  and  uniting  in  our  own  persons  the  incompatible 
characters  of  accuser,  witness,  judge,  and  executioner,  let  us 
decide,  without  trial,  testimony,  or  form,  that  certain  motives 
of  those  who  are  "there  sitting  where  we  dare  not  soar,"  are  repre- 
hensible. Let  us  assume  that  Homer  was  a  drunkard,  that  Virgil 
was  a  flatterer,  that  Horace  was  a  coward,  that  Tasso  was  a  mad- 
man, that  Lord  Bacon  was  a  peculator,  that  Raphael  was  a  liber- 
tine, that  Spenser  was  a  poet-laureate.     It  is  inconsistent  with 

1  [No  one  deserves  the  name  of  creator,  except  God  and  the  Poet.] 


334  PERCY   BYSSHE  SHELLEY 

this  division  of  our  subject  to  cite  living  poets,  but  posterity  has 
done  ample  justice  to  the  great  names  now  referred  to.  Their 
errors  have  been  v^^eighed  and  found  to  have  been  dust  in  the 
balance;  if  their  sins  "were  as  scarlet,  they  are  now  white  as 
snow";  they  have  been  washed  in  the  blood  of  the  mediator  and 
redeemer,  Time.  Observe  in  what  a  ludicrous  chaos  the  impu- 
tations of  real  or  fictitious  crime  have  been  confused  in  the  con- 
temporary calumnies  against  poetry  and  poets;  consider  how 
little  is,  as  it  appears  —  or  appears,  as  it  is;  look  to  your  own 
motives,  and  judge  not,  lest  ye  be  judged. 

Poetry,  as  has  been  said,  differs  in  this  respect  from  logic,  that 
it  is  not  subject  to  the  control  of  the  active  powers  of  the  mind, 
and  that  its  birth  and  recurrence  have  no  necessary  connection 
with  the  consciousness  or  will.  It  is  presumptuous  to  determine 
that  these  are  the  necessary  conditions  of  all  mental  causation, 
when  mental  effects  are  experienced  unsusceptible  of  being  referred 
to  them.  The  frequent  recurrence  of  the  poetical  power,  it  is 
obvious  to  suppose,  may  produce  in  the  mind  a  habit  of  order 
and  harmony  correlative  with  its.  own  nature  and  with  its  effects 
upon  other  minds.  But  in  the  intervals  of  inspiration,  and  they 
may  be  frequent  without  being  durable,  a  poet  becomes  a  man, 
and  is  abandoned  to  the  sudden  reflux  of  the  influences  under 
which  others  habitually  live.  But  as  he  is  more  delicately  organ- 
ized than  other  men,  and  sensible  to  pain  and  pleasure,  both  his 
own  and  that  of  others,  in  a  degree  unknown  to  them,  he  will 
avoid  the  one  and  pursue  the  other  with  an  ardour  proportioned 
to  this  difference.  And  he  renders  himself  obnoxious  to  calumny 
when  he  neglects  to  observe  the  circumstances  under  which  these 
objects  of  universal  pursuit  and  flight  have  disguised  themselves 
in  one  another's  garments. 

But  there  is  nothing  necessarily  evil  in  this  error,  and  thus 
cruelty,  envy,  revenge,  avarice,  and  the  passions  purely  evil  have 
never  formed  any  portion  of  the  popular  imputations  on  the  lives 
of  poets. 

I  have  thought  it  most  favourable  to  the  cause  of  truth  to  set 
down  these  remarks  according  to  the  order  in  which  they  were 
suggested  to  my  mind  by  a  consideration  of  the  subject  itself, 
instead  of  observing  the  formality  of  a  polemical  reply;  but  if  the 
view  which  they  contain  be  just,  they  will  be  found  to  involve  a 
refutation  of  the  arguers  against  poetry,  so  far  at  least  as  regards 
the  first  division  of  the  subject.     I  can  readily  conjecture  what 


A   DEFENCE  OF  POETRY  335 

should  have  moved  the  gall  of  some  learned  and  intelligent  writers 
who  quarrel  with  certain  versifiers;  I  confess  myself,  like  them, 
unwilling  to  be  stunned  by  the  Theseids  of  the  hoarse  Codri  of 
the  day.  Bavius  and  Maevius  undoubtedly  are,  as  they  ever 
were,  insufferable  persons.  But  it  belongs  to  a  philosophical 
critic  to  distinguish  rather  than  confound. 

The  first  part  of  these  remarks  has  related  to  poetry  in  its  ele- 
ments and  principles ;  and  it  has  been  shown,  as  well  as  the  narrow 
limits  assigned  them  would  permit,  that  what  is  called  poetry, 
in  a  restricted  sense,  has  a  common  source  with  all  other  forms 
of  order  and  of  beauty,  according  to  which  the  materials  of  human 
life  are  susceptible  of  being  arranged,  and  which  is  poetry  in  an 
universal  sense. 

The  second  part  will  have  for  its  object  an  application  of  these 
principles  to  the  present  state  of  the  cultivation  of  poetry,  and  a 
defence  of  the  attempt  to  idealize  the  modern  forms  of  manners 
and  opinions,  and  compel  them  into  a  subordination  to  the  imagi- 
native and  creative  faculty.  For  the  literature  of  England,  an 
energetic  development  of  which  has  ever  preceded  or  accompanied 
a  great  and  free  development  of  the  national  will,  has  arisen,  as 
it  were,  from  a  new  birth.  In  spite  of  the  low-thoughted  envy 
which  would  undervalue  contemporary  merit,  our  own  will  be  a 
memorable  age  in  intellectual  achievements,  and  we  live  among 
such  philosophers  and  poets  as  surpass  beyond  comparison  any 
who  have  appeared  since  the  last  national  struggle  for  civil  and 
religious  liberty.  The  most  unfailing  herald,  companion,  and 
follower  of  the  awakening  of  a  great  people  to  work  a  beneficial 
change  in  opinion  or  institution  is  poetry.  At  such  periods  there 
is  an  accumulation  of  the  power  of  communicating  and  receiving 
intense  and  impassioned  conceptions  respecting  men  and  nature. 
The  persons  in  whom  this  power  resides  may  often,  as  far  as 
regards  many  portions  of  their  nature,  have  little  apparent  corre- 
spondence with  that  spirit  of  good  of  which  they  are  the  ministers. 
But  even  whilst  they  deny  and  abjure,  they  are  yet  compelled  to 
serve,  the  power  which  is  seated  on  the  throne  of  their  own  soul. 
It  is  impossible  to  read  the  compositions  of  the  most  celebrated 
writers  of  the  present  day  without  being  startled  with  the  electric 
life  which  burns  within  their  words.  They  measure  the  circum- 
ference and  sound  the  depths  of  human  nature  with  a  compre- 
hensive and  all-penetrating  spirit,  and  they  are  themselves  per- 
haps the  most  sincerely  astonished  at  its  manifestations;    for  it 


336  PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 

is  less  their  spirit  than  the  spirit  of  the  age.  Poets  are  the  hiero- 
phants  of  an  unapprehended  inspiration;  the  mirrors  of  the 
gigantic  shadows  which  futurity  casts  upon  the  present ;  the  words 
which  express  what  they  understand  not;  the  trumpets  which 
sing  to  battle,  and  feel  not  what  they  inspire;  the  influence  which 
is  moved  not,  but  moves.  Poets  are  the  unacknowledged  legis- 
lators of  the  world. 


NOTES 


The  following  notes  and  questions  aim  to  aid  the  student  in  the  analysis 
of  the  foregoing  selections.  No  attempt  is  made  to  supply  data  of  historical 
or  explanatory  sort  other  than  may  be  needed  in  the  understanding  of  what 
the  writers  are  driving  at.  The  material  that  a  critic  uses,  his  point  of  view, 
and  the  sanctions  for  his  views  or  the  positive  demonstration  of  their  truth 
are  what,  in  the  opinion  of  the  editor,  are  of  prime  importance  for  the  student 
to  comprehend.  In  so  extensive,  varied,  and,  in  the  last  analysis,  so  personal 
a  thing  as  literary  criticism,  no  notes  and  questions  can  hope  to  be  exhaustive. 
Accordingly,  in  the  following  pages,  only  main  points  are  indicated,  and  these 
in  a  suggestive  rather  than  a  dogmatic  way.  Countless  other  questions  will 
occur  to  every  student  and  teacher,  but  a  careful  study  of  what  is  here  sup- 
plied should  furnish  a  pretty  comprehensive  idea  of  the  chief  sources  of  inter- 
est in  literary  criticism,  of  the  more  typical  methods  that  it  employs,  and  the 
types  of  demonstration  of  which  critical  opinion  is  susceptible. 

I.   LESLIE   STEPHEN 

Stephen's  account  of  the  work  which  Swift  did  in  behalf  of  Ireland  is  an 
example  of  what  may  be  termed  biographical  criticism,  the  criticism,  that  is, 
which  interprets  a  man's  writings  in  relation  to  his  life.  More  particularly, 
this  chapter  is  (i)  a  statement  of  Swift's  position  immediately  after  his  leav- 
ing England  on  the  fall  of  the  Tory  ministry,  (2)  a  view  of  the  political  situa- 
tion in  Ireland  at  that  time,  (3)  a  narrative  of  how  Swift  acted  during  the  en- 
suing score  of  years  with  regard  to  that  situation,  and  (4)  the  comments  of 
the  biographer  on  Swift's  acts  and  writings.  Of  these  items  the  iarst  three 
are  narration  and  exposition  of  known  fact,  and  criticism  enters  only  in  so  far 
as  Stephen  interprets  these  acts  in  one  way  or  another.  The  fourth  item  is 
the  strictly  critical  part  of  the  chapter ;  the  critical  issue  regards  the  value  of 
Swift's  work.  The  critical  questions  that  Stephen  raises  have  to  do  with 
(i)  the  justice  of  Swift's  position,  (2)  the  practical  effectiveness  of  his  writing, 
and  (3)  the  general  worthiness  of  his  championship  of  the  oppressed.  These 
questions  are  economical,  political,  and  ethical,  rather  than  strictly  literary, 
and  the  evidence  in  support  of  Stephen's  judgment  is  from  ethical  and 
economic  standards,  historical  events,  and  a  comparison  with  Berkeley. 
Hence  the  conclusions  are  less  personal  and  more  susceptible  of  proof  than 
would  be  the  conclusions  of  an  impressionistic  method. 

For  that  reason,  the  present  essay  is  a  good  one  from  which  to  approach 
the  study  of  criticism.  The  best  way  to  begin  such  study  is  with  pieces 
wherein  the  conclusions  can  be  shown  to  be  based  on  more  or  less  tangible 
and  acceptable  evidence,  rather  than  on  predilection  or  personal  impression. 
M  i^:  philological  criticism  (of  necessity  excluded  from  this  volume)  has  this 

z  337 


338 


NOTES 


same  advantage  —  that  its  standards  can  be  more  exactly  applied.     The  per- 
sonal question  does  not  so  largely  enter. 

Other  examples  of  criticism  of  the  same  biographical  sort  will  be  found 
in  such  volumes  as  the  English  Men  of  Letters  Series,  especially  those  on 
Pope  and  Johnson  by  the  same  author,  the  Great  Writers  Series,  the  Beacon 
Biographies,  particularly  Professor  Carpenter's  Longfellow,  a  nice  instance 
of  the  method,  the  longer  articles  in  the  Dictionary  of  National  Biography  — 
and  others.  Good  critical  essays  by  Stephen  —  many  of  them  of  a  philo- 
sophical rather  than  a  biographical  character  —  are  those  of  Hours  in  a 
Library  and  Studies  of  a  Biographer.  For  other  lives  of  Swift,  consult 
Scott,  Forster,  Craiii,  and  Collins. 

1.  Analyze  the  selection  with  a  view  to  showing  the  points  which  Stephen 
brings  out.  What  parts  are  concerned  with  Swift's  personality,  character, 
and  motives?  What  with  the  situation  in  which  he  found  himself  and  the 
condition  of  Ireland  ?  What  conclusion  does  Stephen  arrive  at  with  regard 
to  the  value  of  Swift's  work?  Is  the  value  of  a  literary,  or  of  some  other, 
kind?     What  is  the  evidence  on  which  Stephen  bases  his  conclusions? 

2.  Compare  the  chapter  with  that  on  Uulliver's  Travels  from  the  same 
book;  do  you  note  any  differences  in  the  kind  of  critical  evidence  or  in  the 
kind  of  values?  Write  a  commentaiy  on  some  portion  of  the  work  of  an 
author's  life. 

II.    DAVID    MASSON 

The  review  of  De  Quincey's  writings  is  a  good  example  of  formal  literary 
classification.  Like  any  thorough  classification,  it  (i)  gives  the  basis  or 
principle  on  which  the  divisions  are  made,  (2)  enumerates  the  individuals 
in  the  classes  and  sub-classes,  and  (3)  illustrates  each  class  by  typical  exam- 
ples. It  further  attempts  to  bring  out  the  variety  and  range  of  De  Quincey's 
work  and  to  show  the  relative  significance  and  value  of  the  different  classes 
and  of  individual  pieces.  It  will  be  noted  that  the  basis  of  classification  is 
mainly  the  ideas  that  are  to  be  found  in  De  Quincey's  work,  but  other  de- 
scriptive categories  are  also  used.  Some  of  these,  according  to  the  character 
of  the  work  under  discussion,  are  a;sthetic,  some  have  to  do  with  the  occasion 
of  the  work,  some  with  structure,  and  some,  as  the  description  of  Plato's 
Republic,  with  De  Quincey's  temperamental  reactions.  It  will  also  be 
observed  that  the  descriptions  of  .some  of  the  works,  as  Klnsterheim  and  The 
English  Mail  Coach,  are  pretty  full;  these  are  good  examples  of  descriptive 
summary.     There  is  also  a  good  deal  of  illustrative  quotation. 

So  formal  a  classification  as  this  is  not  very  common  in  criticism,  but 
classification  of  some  sort  may  be  said  to  be  implied  in  any  good  literary 
discussion  whatsoever.  The  account  of  Wood's  Halfpence,  the  preceding 
selection,  for  example,  is  rcallv  a  .sub-class  of  all  Swift's  writings,  embracing 
those  in  behalf  of  Ireland.  Again,  literary  classification  may  be  made  on 
dilTerent  bases.  A  "polyhistor"  like  De  Quincey,  whose  works  bear  singu- 
larly little  relation  to  the  course  of  his  life,  may  best  be  approached  with 
reference  to  his  ideas,  but  a  classification  on  the  basis  of  his  manner  would  also 
be  possible.  The  writings  of  a  man  like  Swift,  on  the  contrary,  whose  life 
was  passed  in  practical  activity  and  who  contributed  little  to  our  stock  of  ideas, 
though  much  to  our  amusement,  were  better  classed  by  the  occasion;  and 
such  is  the  scheme  adopted  by  Stephen  in  his  life  of  Swift.     A  classification 


NOTES 


339 


of  Swift's  works  into  controversial  articles,  satires,  etc.,  would  also  be  pos- 
sible. With  Lamb,  again,  a  classification  largely  by  forms,  into  stories, 
dramas,  criticism,  and  essays,  etc.,  would  be  convenient  and  would  have 
the  additional  aptness  of  following  pretty  closely  the  various  successive 
interests  of  Lamb's  literary  development.  An  example  of  formal  literary 
classification,  not  so  thorough  as  Masson's,  will  be  found  in  Nichol's  Carlyle 
in  the  English  Men  of  Letters. 

1.  Point  out  the  parts  of  the  present  essay  which  (i)  explain  the  principles 
of  the  classification  used,  (2)  name  the  individuals,  and  (3)  characterize  the 
types  and  individuals.  In  what  different  ways  does  the  critic  characterize 
the  work  of  the  author  ?  What  does  Masson  say  of  the  relative  value  of  the 
different  writings  of  De  Quincey?  What  of  De  Quincey's  claim  to  compara- 
tive greatness? 

2.  How  many  of  these  characterizations  state  fact,  and  what  ones  merely 
express  opinion  ?  Do  you  see  any  reason  for  Masson's  opinion  that  De  Quin- 
cey's biographical  sketch  of  Shakespeare  is  "the  perfection  of  proportion" 
(p.  18)  ?  Does  Masson  demonstrate  his  opinion  of  De  Quincey  as  a  critic 
(p.  31)  ?     What  of  the  estimate  of  Levana  ? 

_  3.  Point  out  the  principle  and  scheme  of  classification  in  other  essays  in 
this  volume.  Make  a  classification  of  the  works  of  some  writer  with  whom 
you  are  tolerably  familiar,  with  a  view  to  showing  his  range,  variety,  and  chief 
points  of  excellence. 

III.   SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

Johnson's  famous  piece  of  criticism  is  an  example  of  that  kind  which 
attempts  to  characterize  the  type  or  genre  to  which  a  man  belongs.  Cowley 
is  treated  as  the  representative  of  a  class,  a  fashion,  or  a  cast  of  mind.  John- 
son's exposition  is  excellent:  he,  following  his  usually  systematic  and  simple 
intellectual  methods,  first  characterizes  his  type  and  then  illustrates  it.  The 
critical  question  at  issue  would,  therefore,  be  how  fairly  Johnson  has  repre- 
sented the  men  he  is  dealing  with;  how  far,  in  short,  his  characterization  is 
a  matter  of  fact.  His  judgment  concerning  the  passages  quoted  is  presumably 
solid  and  authoritative ;  but  more  modern  students  differ  with  him  in  holding 
that  he  has  not  fairly  represented  the  better  side  of  Donne,  Cowley,  and 
others. 

In  recent  years  a  good  deal  of  heed  has  been  paid  to  the  study  of  form  or 
genre  in  literature,  on  the  principle  that  individual  pieces  of  writing  may 
properly  be  compared  only  with  like  kinds,  but  that  the  different  genres^ 
the  epic,  the  lyric,  the  novel,  etc. —  have  different  degrees  of  value,  and  on 
the  ground,  too,  that  the  proper  study  of  literature  can  best  proceed  by  pro- 
cess of  isolating  and  tracing  the  origin  and  development  of  various  forms.  An 
important  book  of  this  type  is  the  late  F.  Brunetiere's  V Evolution  des  genres 
dans  Vhistoire  de  la  litteratiire,  and  various  special  books,  such  as  Professor 
W.  L.  Cross's  The  Development  of  the  English  Novel,  and  Professor  John 
Erskine's  Elizabethan  Lyric,  are  examples  of  the  study. 

I.  What,  according  to  Johnson,  are  the  chief  characteristics  of  the 
"  metaphysical  poets  "  ?  What  is  meant,  in  this  essay,  by  "  wit "  ?  By  "  art "  ? 
By  to  "  copy  nature  or  life  "  ?  By  "  singular  in  their  tho{ights"  ?  By  "just"  ? 
By  "conceits"?  By  "inelegant"  ?  By  the  various  figures  of  speech  in  the 
quotations?  By  such  phrases,  in  the  opening  paragraph,  as  "Tracing 
intellectual  pleasure  to  its  natural  sources  in  the  mind  of  men,"  etc.? 


340  NOTES 

2.  In  general,  by  what  sanctions  does  Johnson  seek  to  establish  his  posi- 
tions, in  this  essay?  What  are  his  standards  for  critical  judgment?  Com- 
pare these  with  the  evidence  that  he  uses  in  others  of  The  Lives  of  the  Poets, 
in,  for  example,  his  famous  characterization  of  Pope's  personality,  character, 
and  attainment.  Test  the  truth  of  such  phrases  as  "  Sublimity  is  produced  by 
aggregation  and  littleness  of  dispersion.  Great  thoughts  are  always  general, 
and  consist  in  positions  not  Hmited  by  exceptions,  and  in  descriptions  not 
descending  to  minuteness"  (p.  47). 

IV.   THOMAS   BABINGTON   MACAULAY 

The  present  selection  is  an  example  of  what  is  frequently  called  destructive 
criticism,  in  that  it  assails  a  received  tradition  arid  a  current  vogue.  Macau- 
lay's  point  is  not  so  much  to  establish  principles  for  guidance  in  criticism 
as  to  test  a  given  product  by  certain  standards.  What  these  standards  are 
may  be  gathered  from  the  sins  of  which  Montgomery  has  been  guilty,  as,  for 
example,  to  mention  the  chief  in  order  of  appearance :  stealing  of  other  men's 
ideas,  mutilation  of  them,  the  indiscriminate  use  of  figures,  stupidity,  false 
syntax,  lack  of  harmony,  gross  bad  taste  and  even  blasphemy,  incoherence, 
lack  of  sense  of  situation,  tautology,  tasteless  descriptions,  the  presentation 
of  disjointed  and  silly  physics,  metaphysics,  and  theology,  meaningless 
phrases,  etc.  The  standards,  it  is  evident,  are  of  different  kinds;  some  are 
merely  rhetorical,  others  have  to  do  with  philosophy,  religion,  the  writer's 
power  of  observation,  and  good  use  generally. 

The  critical  issue  of  this  essay,  aside  from  the  opening  anathema  against 
puffing,  is  with  regard  (i)  to  the  specific  fairness  with  which  the  points  against 
Montgomery  are  made,  and  (2)  granting  their  specific  fairness,  whether  or  not 
they  are  representative  of  Montgomery.  It  is  the  same  question  that  came 
up  regarding  Johnson's  discourse  on  the  metaphysical  poets.  Another  inter- 
esting point  would  be  the  actual  effect  of  such  a  piece  of  criticism  as  the 
present. 

The  incomplete  outlines  given  above  of  the  topics  treated  in  the  essay  re- 
veals the  fact  that  Macaulay  approached  his  victim  without  much  system. 
Structurally,  the  essay  is  a  scries  of  brilliant  points,  or  examples,  of  diverse 
character,  rather  than  a  sustained  thesis.  Possibly  this  method  of  attack  is 
better  than  a  more  formal  one  would  be  in  dealing  with  so  weak  an  opponent 
as  Montgomery;  the  rapid-fire  of  Macaulay's  style  is  very  brisk  and  vigorous. 
Certainly  there  are  few  more  lively  and  energetic  pieces  of  criticism  in  the 
language  than  this. 

1.  Show  in  each  detail  what  Macaulay's  standards  of  judgment  are. 
Can  these  be  classified  under  one  general  head?  If  so,  compare  that  general 
standard  with  those  im])lied  in  the  essays  of  Johnson,  Arnold,  Paler,  and 
others.  Compare  the  standards  of  Macaulay  with  those  of  other  critics  of  the 
judicial  type,  as  Johnson  {Lives  oj  the  Poets)  or  Jeffrey.  (See  L.  E.Gates's 
Selections  from  Jeffrey.)  Compare  the  present  essay  with  such  essays  as 
those  of  Mr.  J.  M.  Robertson  on  Arnold,  Ruskin,  Carlyle,  Emerson,  and 
others  in  Modern  Humanists,  to  note  any  difference  in  standards. 

2.  Are  the  points  made  by  Macaulay  well  taken  ?  Are  they  of  equal  im- 
portance? Does  he  really  prove  that  Montgomery  was  a  plagiarist?  Are 
these  points  representative  of  Montgomery?  Is  Montgomery  assailed  as  a 
person  or  as  a  typically  bad  example  ? 


NOTES  341 

3.  Look  into  the  history  of  the  effect  of  this  essay  and  see  if  you  can  deter- 
mine why  it  may  have  accomphshed  its  end,  an  1  why  Jeffrey's  equally  vehe- 
ment onslaughts  on  Wordsworth  are  looked  upon  as  failures. 


V.   WALTER   BAGEHOT 

Bagehot's  essay  on  Dickens's  novels  is  an  attempt  to  make  one  of  those 
estimates  of  an  author  which  is  called  a  review,  for  the  convenience  and 
enlightenment  of  actual  and  prospective  readers.  This  issue  is  stated  clearly 
in  the  third  paragraph.  Admitting  the  greatness  and  the  vogue  of  Dickens, 
Bagehot's  aim  is  to  classify  Dickens's  genius  and  to  show  the  characteristic 
excellences  and  defects  which  emanate  from  it,  and  of  which  it  is  illustrative. 
This  aim  Bagehot  carries  out  by  his  very  broad  division  of  men  of  genius  into 
the  regular  and  the  irregular,  with  the  accompanying  illustrations  of  each 
type  and  the  orderly  analysis  of  Dickens's  qualities  which  illustrate  the  type 
to  which  he  belongs. 

Throughout  the  essay  Bagehot  deals  with  these  large  opposing  types, 
best  illustrated  by  the  fundamental  dichotomy  of  "regular"  and  "irregular." 
His  classification  of  novels  into  the  "ubiquitous"  and  the  "sentimental"  is 
another  f-ase  in  point.  The  same  trait  is  to  be  observed  in  other  essays  by 
the  same  hand:  for  example,  in  Shakespeare  The  Man  (1853),  Bagehot,  by 
a  series  of  contrasted  general  types  —  as  the  "experiencing  mind"  (illustrated 
by  Shakespeare),  the  mind  that  grows  by  contact  with  new  experience,  and 
that  which  is,  as  it  were,  "  cast"  from  the  start — he  arrives  at  a  tolerably  full 
characterization  of  the  poet.  It  is  obvious  that  the  soundness  of  Bagehot's 
criticism  must  in  a  large  measure  depend  on  the  common  sense  of  these  fun- 
damental distinctions.  They  are  not  at  all  distinctions  of  impression,  subtle 
phrasings  —  as  with  Pater,  in  the  following  essay  —  of  the  critic's  own  feeling 
for  the  object,  but  are  so  broad  and  obvious  as  to  be  as  self-evident  as  axioms 
in  mathematics.  Some,  of  course,  are  pretty  obvious.  These  distinctions  are 
evidently  the  chief  standard  of  judgment  by  which  Bagehot  measures  his 
subjects,  and  they  possess  to  a  high  degree  the  quality  that  is  called  "  insight." 

It  is  evident,  also,  that  Bagehot  here,  as  in  other  essays,  like  those  of 
Hartley  Coleridge,  Bishop  Butler,  Wordsworth,  and  others,  is  interested  in 
his  subject  chiefly  as  a  type  of  mind  or  of  art.  In  Wordsworth,  Tennyson,  and 
Browning;  on  Pure,  Ornate,  and  Grotesque  Art  in  Poetry  (1864),  for  example, 
Bagehot  cares  for  the  poets  primarily  as  illustrations  of  a  type  of  art;  Tenny- 
son, say,  represents  the  kind  of  writing  which  gains  its  effects  from  accumu- 
lation of  details  rather  than  by  repression.  The  truth  or  falsity  of  such  views 
can  be  ascertained  by  an  examination  of  the  data  supplied  by  Tennyson's 
poetry.  Only  it  must  be  remembered  that  Bagehot's  distinctions  are  always 
broad,  and  might  be  unsound  when  applied  to  a  few  minute  matters.  Nor 
should  it  be  forgotten  that  an  entirely  different  set  of  data  might  strike  another 
critic.  The  proof  of  the  matter,  then,  besides  being  axiomatic,  depends  on 
the  aptness  of  illustration,  and  that  is  of  a  very  high  order  in  Bagehot's  work. 

Types  of  critical  writing  which,  like  the  present  essay,  attempt  to  place 
before  the  reader  critical  data  for  judgment  are  to  be  found  in  such  essays 
(inferior  to  this  in  point  of  soundness  of  proof  and  material)  as  Arnold's 
Wordsworth  (Essays  in  Criticism,  Second  Series),  an  attempt  to  show  the 
causes  which  have  kept  that  poet  from  his  just  due,  and  Mr.  Morlcy's  Macau- 


342  NOTES 

lay  (Miscellanies,  Vol.  I.),  a  preparatory  lecture  for  the  reading  of  Trevelyan's 
Life  of  Macaiday.  A  classic  essay  dealing  with  a  broad  distinction  is  Ruskin's 
chapter  on  the  Pathetic  Fallacy  {Modern  Painters,  Vol.  III.),  or  Arnold's 
distinction  between  the  "grand  style  simple"  and  the  "grand  style  severe" 
{On  Translating  Homer). 

One  cannot  dismiss  Bagehot  without  some  mention  of  the  brilliance  and 
vigor  of  his  style.  Occasionally  unorthodox  in  syntactic  relation,  it  is  probably 
unsurpassed  by  that  of  any  English  critic  in  happiness  of  phrasing.  "He 
describes  London  like  a  special  correspondent  for  posterity"  is  a  case  in 
point,  as  are  his  larger  characterizations  of  novels  (p.  88)  and  his  analysis 
of  the  way  Dickens  saw  things  (pp.  90-94). 

I.  Point  out  the  special  question  at  issue  in  this  essay.  Show  how  the 
two  types  of  genius  are  fundamental  to  the  discussion  which  follows.  Show 
in  detail  what  topics  Bagehot  speaks  of  in  the  successive  paragraphs. 

_  2.  E.xplain  in  detail  the  standards  that  Bagehot  uses  in  characterizing 
Dickens.  What  standards  are  employed  or  implied  in  the  comparison,  for 
example,  of  unusual  people,  like  Pickwick  and  Falstaff,  with  "real"  people 
(pp.  96-97)?  What  is  the  standard  in  Bagehot's  discussion  of  Dickens's 
politics  (pp.  102-104)  and  his  education  (pp.  107-109)? 


VI.   WALTER   PATER 

The  very  graceful  essay  on  Wordsworth  belongs  to  that  type  of  criticism 
broadly  called  appreciation  —  which  attempts  not  so  much  to  try  an  author 
by  a  priori  reasoning  as  to  state  his  valuable  qualities.  Pater's  own  defi- 
nition of  the  term  occurs  in  the  preface  to  the  Renaissance  (p.  xi) :  "The 
function  of  the  aesthetic  critic  is  to  distinguish,  analyze,  and  separate  from 
its  adjuncts  the  virtue  by  which  a  picture,  a  landscape,  a  fair  personality  in 
life  or  in  a  book,  produces  this  special  impression  of  beauty  or  pleasure,  to 
indicate  what  the  source  of  that  impression  is  and  under  what  condition  it 
is  experienced."  Following  this  formula.  Pater's  aim  is,  therefore,  to  find 
the  peculiar  virtue  of  Wordsworth;  the  issue  is  expressed  in  the  latter  half  of 
the  fourth  paragraph  (p.  113).  The  essay  then  expounds  the  peculiar  virtue 
of  Wordsworth  from  several  points  of  view  —  his  character  and  material, 
his  beliefs  and  philosophy,  his  manner,  the  constant  trend  of  his  thinking 
toward  contemplation;  and  the  essay  ends  with  a  short  summary  of  his 
quality  and  value. 

The  essay  is,  broadly  speaking,  an  impression  of  Wordsworth.  It  does 
not,  however,  confine  itself  to  a  statement  of  likes  and  dislikes,  but  rather 
deals  with  generalizations  which  Pater  makes  from  facts  which,  from  various 
points  of  view,  he  has  observed  of  Wordsworth's  best  work.  The  sanctions 
for  Pater's  views  arc,  therefore,  observation  of  phenomena  of  spiritual  im- 
port and,  secondarily,  the  agreement  which  these  views  might  have  with  other 
writers  on  the  same  subject,  together  with  the  response  and  agreement  which 
the  criticism  might  arouse  in  the  mind  of  a  reader.  As  information  or  fact, 
the  essay  is  merely  an  exposition  of  what  Pater  himself  saw  and  felt,  and  in 
this  .sense  it  merely  carries  out  the  sentence  quoted  in  the  introduction  to  this 
book :  "  What  is  important,  then,  is  not  that  the  critic  should  possess  a  correct 
abstract  definition  of  beauty  for  the  intellect,  but  a  certain  kind  of  tempera- 
ment, the  power  of  being  deeply  moved  by  the  presence  of  beautiful  objects." 


NOTES  343 

In  thus  making  criticism  simply  a  matter  of  sensuous  perception,  Pater  is, 
within  these  limits,  on  wholly  safe  ground,  and  is  "scientific"  in  so  far  as  he 
expounds  merely  this  fact  that  appears  to  him.  Where  it  lacks  complete- 
ness would  be  in  its  failure  to  take  into  consideration  facts  of  vogue  and  agree- 
ment, and  such  rational  tests  as  might  be  applied  for  the  ascertaining  of  the 
"real"  value  of  Wordsworth. 

Criticism  of  this  type  abounds  in  Pater's  work;  indeed  he  is  the  best  rep- 
resentative of  this  school  in  English.  Appreciations  and  The  Renaissance 
are  the  most  valuable  books  for  study.  An  interesting  excursion  into  criticism 
can  be  made  by  comparing  the  point  of  view,  the  material,  and  the  proof  of 
several  essays  on  Wordsworth  (or  any  other  notable  writer) ;  for  example, 
those  by  Jeffrey  on  The  Excursion  and  The  White  Doe  of  Rhyl  stone,  Coleridge 
in  Biographia  Literaria,  Hazlitt  in  The  Spirit  of  the  Age  and  elsewhere,  De 
Quincey  in  Literary  Reminiscences,  F.  W.  Robertson  in  Lectures  and  Addresses, 
Bagehot  in  Literary  Studies,  Vol.  II.,  Lowell  in  Prose  Works,  Vol.  IV.,  Arnold 
in  Essays  in  Criticism,  Second  Series,  Mr.  Swinburne  in  Miscellanies,  Mr. 
Morley  in  Studies  in  Literature,  Stephen  in  Hours  in  a  Library,  Vol.  II., 
Professor  Woodberry  in  Makers  of  Literature,  and  others. 

1.  State  the  main  classes  of  material  that  Pater  uses  in  this  essay.  Show 
in  detail  what  he  brings  out  under  each  general  head.  To  what  degree  does 
Pater  deal  with  Wordsworth's  personahty,  character,  hfe,  ideas,  and  manner? 

2.  What  are  Pater's  standards  of  judgment?  How  does  he  demonstrate 
the  truth  of  his  propositions?  To  what  extent  is  he  in  agreement  with  other 
writers  on  the  subject  ?  What  are  the  main  differences  between  his  method 
and  treatment  and  that  of  other  critics  of  Wordsworth. 


VII.   JOHN   MACKINNON   ROBERTSON 

The  essay  on  Poe,  says  Mr.  Robertson,  in  the  preface  to  New  Essays 
towards  a  Critical  Method,  is  the  only  one  in  that  volume  which,  perhaps, 
"comes  near  applying  all  the  tests  mentioned  in  the  preliminary  essay  on 
The  Theory  and  Practice  of  Criticism  as  proper  to  a  critical  inquiry."  The 
gist  of  that  excellent  essay,  with  which  all  students  of  criticism  should  be 
familiar,  is  that  in  the  formation  of  literary  judgments  all  possible  points  of 
view  and  all  the  material  furnished  by  an  author  should  be  considered,  and 
that  in  this  consideration  all  possible  tests,  literary,  logical,  argumentative, 
scientific,  comparative,  etc.,  should  be  employed.  Discussion  of  these  various 
points  would  occupy  a  larger  space  than  may  here  be  given. 

For  present  purposes  the  essay  on  Poe  is  a  new  type  of  criticism.  It  may 
be  called  "scientific"  in  so  far  as  it  attempts  to  take  a  complete  view  of  the 
facts  and  in  so  far  as  it  attempts  to  establish  facts  by  reasoning  rather  than  pre- 
dilection. In  one  sense,  it  may  be  called  "collective,"  in  that  it  states  from 
time  to  time,  as  points  of  departure,  enough  opinions  about  Poe  to  arrive  at 
some  notion  of  the  general  consensus.  It  is  historical  in  that  it  gives  a  good 
idea  of  the  growth  of  Poe's  reputation;  though  this  part  is  incidental  and  not 
consecutive. 

As  "collective  criticism"  it  is  important  to  note  that  Mr.  Robertson  takes 
more  completely  into  consideration  than  any  other  writer  of  this  volume  the 
facts  of  the  vogue  of  his  author  and  antecedent  critical  opinion.  His  cita- 
tion of  other  critics  is  not,  as  with  many  writers,  merely  for  the  sake  of  a  text 


344  NOTES 

for  his  own  views,  but  serves  also  as  material  for  controversy  and  an  attempt 
to  arrive  at  the  truth  on  demonstrable  grounds.  The  critique  is  therefore 
more  than  a  summary  of  historical  facts  or  statement  of  vogue  (things,  indeed, 
too  often  neglected  in  criticism!),  such  as  Professor  Nichol's  statement  of 
Carlyle's  influence  {Carlyle  in  the  English  Men  oj  Letters)  or  Mr.  Sidney  Lee's 
chapter  on  Shakespeare's  Posthumous  Reputation  {Life  of  Shakespeare). 

1.  What  points  regarding  Poe  does  Mr.  Robertson  cite  as  material  for 
criticism?  (Compare  Science  in  Criticism  in  Essays  towards  a  Critical 
Method.)  What  classification  of  material  does  he  make  ?  Compare  the 
method  and  purpose  of  his  classification  with  that  of  Professor  Masson's 
classification  of  De  Quincey's  writings?  What  points  are  made  in  each  of 
the  separate  sections?     Make  a  summary  of  the  essay. 

2.  What  is  Mr.  Robertson's  answer  to  the  "theory  of  development" 
(p.  139)  ?  Why  is  it  "expedient  "  to  follow  Mr.  Stedman,  on  p.  141,  and  not 
on  p.  1 78  ?  What  are  the  canons  by  which  Mr.  Robertson  criticises  The  Raven, 
Lenore,  and  The  Bells  (pp.  142-144)?  What  is  Mr.  Robertson's  idea  of 
"total  performance"  (p.  154)?  of  realism  (pp.  157-159)?  of  Poe's  type  as  a 
realistic  prose  writer  (pp.  1 57-159)?  of  much  contemporary  criticism  (passim)? 

3.  What  sort  of  critical  inquiry  does  Mr.  Robertson  employ  at  different 
points  of  his  essay?  On  what  grounds  are  his  views  demonstrable?  How  far  do 
taste  and  liking  enter  into  his  conclusions?     Answer  these  questions  in  detail. 

4.  Try  to  find  other  examples  of  "collective"  criticism  in  books  of  essays 
and  biographies. 

VIII.    JOHN   DRYDEN 

The  celebrated  Preface  to  the  Fables,  commonly  regarded  as  one  of  the 
masterpieces  of  English  criticism,  appeared  a  few  months  before  Dryden's 
death.  This  was  prefi.xed  to  a  volume  of  translations  and  adaptations,  which 
bore  the  title  Fables,  Ancient  and  Modern,  translated  into  Verse  from  Homer, 
Ovid,  Boccaccio,  and  Chaucer :  with  Original  Poems.  The  Preface  as  it  stands 
is  chiefly  a  criticism  of  Chaucer,  renowned  for  its  cathoHcity  of  taste,  but  it 
contains  also  comparisons  of  the  different  poets  named  in  the  title,  and  a  de- 
fence of  his  own  conduct  from  charges  made  against  him  by  Blackmore,  Mil- 
bourn,  and,  particularly,  Jeremy  Collier,  whose  Short  View  of  the  Profane- 
ness  of  the  English  Stage  (1698)  had  attacked  the  plays  of  Drydcn,  among 
others. 

The  Preface  illustrates  the  general  character  of  Dryden's  criticism;  like 
all  his  other  pieces,  it  is  occasional,  and  seems  to  indicate  the  things  that  he 
was  interested  in  and  the  principles  that  he  devised  and  employed.  It  is  a 
very  interesting  study  to  trace  the  change  in  material  and  the  critical  prin- 
ciples which  these  prefaces  show,  and  for  this  study  Mr.  W.  P.  Ker's  Essays 
of  John  Drydcn  is  a  valuable  book. 

In  this  particular  essay  are  to  be  noted  the  pleasure  that  Dryden  evi- 
dently has  in  literature,  his  desire  to  show  the  letters  of  his  country  in  the  best 
light,  his  catholicity  of  temper,  and  the  gentlemanly  discursiveness  of  his 
style.  The  princii)les  which  he  enunciates  in  passing  are  interesting: 
the  favor  of  the  reader,  common-sense,  and  moderation,  arc  evidently  the 
chief  court  of  appeal,  but  he  also  recognized  ideas  of  growth  in  language  and 
the  necessity  of  moral  standards.  Once  only,  and  then  in  a  vague  way 
(p.  198)  he  cites  authority  —  that  of  Aristotle. 


NOTES  345 

Dryden  employs  a  method  of  comparison,  balancing  Homer  and  Virgil, 
Chaucer  and  Ovid,  Chaucer  and  Boccaccio,  Chaucer  and  Horace  and  Virgil. 
The  material  comprises  facts  of  life,  of  personality,  of  time  and  place,  of  char- 
acter, of  learning,  of  style,  of  invention,  of  imagination,  of  structural  design 
(which  Dryden  regards  as  very  important  in  the  determination  of  the  result), 
of  understanding  of  the  subject,  of  verisimilitude,  of  dramatic  naturalness 
and  taste,  of  good  sense  and  judgment,  the  "following  of  nature,"  of  style 
and  verse  and  harmony,  and  such  things.  Under  some  of  these  heads  his 
facts  are  wrong,  as  in  his  attributing  of  Piers  Ploughman  to  Chaucer,  and  his 
strictures  on  Chaucer's  verse,  and,  in  general,  his  knowledge  does  not,  in  all 
ways,  correspond  to  our  own  (cf.  Lounsbury's  Studies  in  Chancer,  for  a  more 
modern  view  of  the  facts),  but  wherein  he  fails  is  because  of  deficient  know- 
ledge rather  than  by  reason  of  unsound  judgment  on  the  evidence;  in  both 
knowledge  and  taste  he  was,  as  we  are  fond  of  thinking,  far  in  advance  of 
his  age. 

1.  Make  an  analysis  of  the  topics  of  Dryden's  essay.  Point  out  any 
other  principles  besides  those  enumerated  that  you  have  noticed,  and  also 
show  the  points  of  comparison  on  which  the  critical  findings  rest.  What 
does  Dryden  say  with  regard  to  the  relative  value  of  these  points  of  interest  ? 
What  does  he  say  of  "conceits,"  and  how  sound  are  his  reasons? 

2.  Compare  the  present  essay  with  the  Epistle  Dedicatory  to  the  Rival 
Ladies  (1664,  Ker,  Vol.  I.,  p.  i)  with  a  view  to  showing  the  difference  of  mate- 
rial in  each.  With  the  preface  to  Annus  Mirabilis  (1666,  Ker,  Vol.  I.,  p.  10). 
With  the  essay  on  Heroic  Plays  (1672,  Ker,  Vol.  I.,  p.  148),  and  others. 
Compare  it,  in  point  of  material,  critical  principles,  appeal  to  authority, 
method  of  arriving  at  judgments,  and  form,  with  the  celebrated  Essay  of 
Dramatic  Poesy,   1668. 

Compare  Dryden  from  these  points  of  view  with  preceding  and  succeed- 
ing critics,  such  as  Sidney,  Ben  Jonson,  Addison,  and  Samuel  Johnson. 

IX.     FREDERIC   HARRISON 

The  essay  on  Ruskin  illustrates  a  not  uncommon  type  of  critical  writing, 
in  that  it  aims  primarily  to  take  neither  a  general  survey  of  a  man's  work  nor 
to  present  a  theory  of  art,  but  to  expound  and  estimate  specific  excellences. 
This  purpose  the  author  states  in  paragraph  2  (p.  202)  and  again  in  para- 
graph 8  (p.  204).  It  is  carried  out  in  two  chief  ways,  after  some  discussion 
of  the  more  general  aspects  of  Ruskin's  character  and  teaching:  (i)  by 
various  adjectives  characterizing  Ruskin's  prose  and  (2)  by  some  analysis 
of  the  "consonance"  of  his  sentences.  There  is  also  a  division  of  a  not  un- 
common type,  especially  in  art  criticism,  into  "earlier"  and  "later"  manner, 
with  some  explanation  of  each. 

Of  neither  of  these  points,  the  general  characteristics  and  the  "  consonance," 
is  Mr.  Harrison's  analysis  very  definite.  With  regard  to  the  first,  he  uses 
with  great  frequency  such  categories  as  "precious,"  "grotesque,"  "noble," 
"eccentric,"  "obtrusively  luscious,"  which  are  somewhat  in  the  air,  but  with 
regard  to  the  actual  length  of  some  of  Ruskin's  periods  he  is  more  exact,  if  not 
more  luminous.  The  terms  quoted  evidently  imply  some  standard  of  perfect 
prose,  —  like  Arnold's  phrase,  "regularity,  uniformity,  precision,  balance" 
{The  Study  of  Poetry),  —  but  what  this  standard  is  probably  no  critics  agree. 
Indeed  it  is  probably  impossible  of  determination.     Attempts  have  been 


346 


NOTES 


made  to  limit  and  define  good  English  prose  In  an  arbitrary,  a  priori  way  by 
saying  that  it  should  contain  a  fixed  proportion  of  Latin  words  to  Anglo- 
Saxon  words,  and  some  authors  have  found  hope  in  the  word-length  of 
sentences;  but  these  attempts  merely  supply  more  or  less  interesting  and  in- 
structive data.  Such  data  Mr.  Harrison  recognizes  merely  as  illustrative  of 
something  extraordinary  in  Ruskin's  periods.  He  also  recognizes  the  patent 
fact  of  relativity  in  prose,  or  of  types  of  style,  as  that  of  the  preacher  or  the 
philosopher  (p.  206). 

The  second  point,  that  of  "consonance,"  is  one  that  has  been  more  thor- 
oughly studied,  along  with  other  things,  in  connection  with  verse  rather  than 
as  an  adjunct  to  prose.  There  are  probably  no  such  good  analyses  of  prose 
as  of  verse,  for  e.xample,  Professor  Gummere's  Handbook  of  Poetics,  or 
Professor  Alden's  English  Verse.  Mr.  Harrison's  remark  that  he  knew  no 
systematic  study  of  the  subject  is  undoubtedly  true,  but  Stevenson's  analysis 
of  this  element  in  On  Style  in  Literature  (cf.  my  Representative  Essays  on 
the  Theory  of  Style)  antedates  this  essay  by  ten  years,  and  is  also  more 
thorough.     (Cf.  also  my  Studies  in  Structure  and  Style  in  relation  to  Ruskin.) 

Mr.  Harrison  is  wrong  when  he  says  (p.  215,  n.)  that  Ruskin's  sentence  of 
619  words  is  possibly  "the  most  gigantic  sentence  in  English  prose."  There 
is  one  in  Hazlitt's  sketch  of  Coleridge  in  The  Spirit  oj  the  Age  of  848  words, 
which,  however,  could,  like  most  prize  sentences,  have  been  broken  by  slight 
changes  of  punctuation.  It  is  so  interesting  in  its  effect  and  in  its  rhythm 
that  it  may  be  quoted :  — 

"Next,  he  was  engaged  with  Hartley's  tribes  of  mind,  'etherial  braid, 
thought-woven,'  —  and  he  busied  himself  for  a  year  or  two  with  vibrations 
and  vibratiuncles,  and  the  great  law  of  association  that  binds  all  things  in 
mystic  chain,  and  the  doctrine  of  Necessity  (the  mild  teacher  of  Charity) 
and  the  Millennium,  anticipative  of  a  life  to  come  —  and  he  plunged  deep  into 
the  controversy  on  Matter  and  Spirit,  and,  as  an  escape  from  Dr.  Priestly's 
Materialism,  where  he  felt  himself  imprisoned  by  the  logician's  spell,  like 
Ariel  in  the  cloven  pine-tree,  he  became  suddenly  enamoured  of  Bishop 
Berkeley's  fairy-world,'  and  used  in  all  companies  to  build  the  universe,  like 
a  brave  poetical  fiction,  of  fine  words  —  and  he  was  deep-read  in  Malebranche 
and  in  Cudworth's  Intellectual  System  (a  huge  pile  of  learning,  unwieldy, 
enormous)  and  in  Lord  Brook's  hieroglyphic  theories,  and  in  Bishop  Butler's 
Sermons,  and  in  the  Duchess  of  Newcastle's  fantastic  folios,  and  in  Clarke 
and  South  and  Tillotson,  and  all  the  fine  thinkers  and  masculine  rcasoners 
of  that  age  —  and  Leibnitz's  Pre-Established  Harmony  reared  its  arch  above 
his  head,  like  the  rainbow  in  the  cloud,  covenanting  with  the  hopes  of  man 
—  and  then  he  fell  plump,  ten  thousand  fathoms  down  (but  his  wings  saved 
him  harmless)  into  the  hortus  siccus  of  Dissent,  where  he  pared  religion  down 
to  the  standard  of  reason,  and  stripped  faith  of  mystery,  and  preached  Christ 
crucified  and  the  Unity  of  the  Godhead,  and  so  dwelt  for  a  while  in  the  spirit 

'  Mr.  Coleridge  named  his  eldest  son  (the  writer  of  some  beautiful  Sonnets) 
after  Hartley,  and  the  second  after  Berkeley.  The  third  was  called  Derwent, 
after  the  river  of  that  name.  Nothing  ran  he  more  characteristic  of  his  mind 
than  this  circumstance.  All  his  ideas  indeed  are  like  a  river,  flowing  on  forever, 
and  still  murmuring  as  it  flows,  discharging  its  waters  and  still  replenished  — 

'  And  so  by  many  winding  nooks  it  strays, 
With  willing  sport  to  the  wild  ocean ! ' 


NOTES  ,  347 

with  John  Huss  and  Jerome  of  Prague  and  Socinus  and  old  John  Zisca,  and 
ran  through  Neal's  history  of  the  Puritans  and  Calamy's  Non-Conformists' 
Memorial,  having  like  thoughts  and  passions  with  them  —  but  then  Spinoza 
became  his  God,  and  he  took  up  the  vast  chain  of  being  in  his  hand,  and  the 
round  world  became  the  centre  and  the  soul  of  things  in  some  shadowy 
sense,  forlorn  of  meaning,  and  around  him  he  beheld  the  living  traces  and  the 
sky-pointing  proportions  of  the  mighty  Pan  — ■  but  poetry  redeemed  him  from 
this  spectral  philosophy,  and  he  bathed  his  heart  in  beauty,  and  gazed  at  the 
golden  light  of  heaven,  and  drank  of  the  spirit  of  the  universe,  and  wandered 
at  eve  by  fairy-stream  or  fountain, 

'  —  When  he  saw  nought  but  beauty, 
When  he  heard  the  voice  of  that  Almighty  One 
In  every  breeze  that  blew  or  wave  that  murmured '  — 

and  wedded  with  truth  in  Plato's  shade,  and  in  the  writings  of  Proclus 
and  Plotinus  saw  the  ideas  of  things  in  the  eternal  mind,  and  unfolded  all 
mysteries  with  the  Schoolmen  and  fathomed  the  depths  of  Duns  Scotus  and 
Thomas  Aquinas,  and  entered  the  third  heaven  with  Jacob  Behmen,  and 
walked  hand  in  hand  with  Swedenborg  through  the  pavilions  of  the  New 
Jerusalem,  and  sung  his  faith  in  the  promise  and  in  the  word  in  his  Reli- 
gious Musings  —  and  lowering  himself  from  that  dizzy  height,  poised  himself 
on  Milton's  wings,  and  spread  out  his  thoughts  in  charity  with  the  glad  prose 
of  Jeremy  Taylor,  and  wept  over  Bowles's  Sonnets,  and  studied  Cowper's 
blank  verse,  and  betook  himself  to  Thomson's  Castle  of  Indolence,  and  sported 
with  the  wits  of  Charles  the  Second's  days  and  of  Queen  Anne,  and  relished 
Swift's  style  and  that  of  the  John  Bull  (Arbuthnot's  we  mean,  not  Mr. 
Croker's),  and  dallied  with  the  British  Essayists  and  Novelists,  and  knew  all 
qualities  of  more  modern  writers  with  a  learned  spirit,  Johnson,  and  Gold- 
smith, and  Junius,  and  Burke,  and  Godwin,  and  the  Sorrows  of  Werter, 
and  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau,  and  Voltaire,  and  Marivaux,  and  Crebillon, 
and  thousands  more  —  now  'laughed  with  Rabelais  in  his  easy  chair'  or 
pointed  to  Hogarth,  or  afterwards  dwelt  on  Claude's  classic  scenes,  or  spoke 
with  rapture  of  Raphael,  and  compared  the  women  at  Rome  to  figures  that 
had  walked  out  of  his  pictures,  or  visited  the  Oratory  of  Pisa,  and  described 
the  works  of  Giotto  and  Ghirlandaio  and  Massaccio,  and  gave  the  moral  of 
the  picture  of  the  Triumph  of  Death,  where  the  beggars  and  the  wretched 
invoke  his  dreadful  dart,  but  the  rich  and  mighty  of  the  earth  quail  and 
shrink  before  it;  and  in  that  land  of  siren  sights  and  sounds,  saw  a  dance  of 
peasant  girls,  and  was  charmed  with  lutes  and  gondolas,  —  or  wandered  into 
Germany  and  lost  himself  in  the  labyrinths  of  the  Hartz  Forest  and  of  the 
Kantean  philosophy,  and  amongst  the  cabalistic  names  of  Fichte  and  Schel- 
ling  and  Lessing,  and  God  knows  who  —  this  was  long  after,  but  all  the  for- 
mer while  he  had  nerved  his  heart  and  filled  his  eyes  with  tears,  as  he  hailed 
the  rising  orb  of  liberty,  since  quenched  in  darkness  and  in  blood,  and  had 
kindled  his  affections  at  the  blaze  of  the  French  Revolution,  and  sang  for  joy 
when  the  towers  of  the  Bastile  and  the  proud  places  of  the  insolent  and  the 
oppressor  fell,  and  would  have  floated  his  bark,  freighted  with  fondest  fancies, 
across  the  Atlantic  wave  with  Southey  and  others  to  seek  for  peace  and  free- 
dom: — 

'  In  Philarmonia's  undivided  dale  ! ' 


348  NOTES 

In  general,  Mr.  Harrison's  essay  is  somewhat  loose  in  structure.  As  has 
been  said,  he  states  his  point  at  issue  a  couple  of  times  at  least,  frequently 
digresses  from  this  to  discuss  Ruskin's  ideas  and  his  own  likes  and  dislikes, 
and  is  obsessed  with  the  length  of  Ruskin's  sentences. 

1.  Point  out  the  main  topics  of  Mr.  Harrison's  essay  and  show  what  he 
is  treating  in  each  paragraph.  What  is  the  special  topic,  or  critical  issue,  of 
his  essay  ?     Show  how  he  brings  this  out  and  where  he  diverges  from  it. 

2.  Does  Mr.  Harrison  use  largely  categories  of  demonstrable  fact,  or  does 
he  frequently  deal  with  terms  equivalent,  in  general,  to  "good"  or  "bad"? 
What,  with  regard  to  the  preceding  question,  is  implied  in  such  a  sentence  as 
this  (p.  21 1):  "The  piece  is  overwrought  as  well  as  unjust,  with  some- 
what false  emphasis,  but  how  splendid  in  colour  and  majestic  in  language"  ? 
Or  this  (p.  2iq):  "Every  other  faculty  of  a  great  master  of  speech,  except 
reserve,  husbanding  of  resources,  and  patience,  he  possesses  in  a  measure 
most  abundant  —  lucidity,  purity,  brilliance,  elasticity,  wit,  fire,  passion, 
imagination,  majesty,  with  a  mastery  over  all  the  melody  of  cadence  that  has 
no  rival  in  the  whole  range  of  English  literature"?  Or  this  (p.  211): 
"Stained  as  usual  with  the  original  sin  of  Calvinism"  ?  Or  by  the  "perfect 
style"  (p.  205)?  Compare  On  English  Prose  in  the  same  volume  from 
which  this  essay  is  taken  (or  Represoitatwe  Essays  on  the  Theory  of  Style). 
Make  a  catalogue  of  the  categories  which  Mr.  Harrison  employs,  with  a  view 
to  ascertaining  his  standards  and  the  sanctions  or  proofs  for  them. 

3.  State  Mr.  Harrison's  theory  of  "Consonance."  Compare  it  with 
Stevenson's  in  On  Style  in  Literature.  Do  you  notice  any  defects  in  the 
theory?     Test  by  this  theory  any  passage  that  seems  to  you  to  be  good. 

4.  Point  out  other  English  critics,  such  as  Hazlitt,  who  have  made  large 
use  of  aesthetic  categories  in  their  criticism. 

X.     CHARLES   LAMB 

Lamb's  famous  essay  on  Shakespeare,  perhaps  his  most  conspicuous  piece 
of  criticism,  is  as  good  an  example  as  can  be  found  of  that  paradoxical  type 
which  rests  on  personality  and  a  wholly  a  priori  premise.  That  premise 
is  expressed  in  these  words:  "They  [Shakespeare's  plays]  being  in  themselves 
essentially  so  different  from  all  others"  (p.  228).  Following  from  this,  the 
critical  proposition  is:  "I  cannot  help  being  of  opinion  that  the  plays  of 
Shakespeare  are  less  calculated  for  performance  on  a  stage  than  those  of 
almost  any  other  dramatist  whatever"  (p.  222).  This  position  Lamb  main- 
tains in  a  series  of  very  brilliantly  phrased  reasons,  of  which  that  about  Lear 
(p.  231)  is  classic  in  its  eloquence  and  an  excellent  example  of  the  dominance 
of  taste  in  criticism. 

The  chief  positions  of  the  essay  are  these :  ( i)  The  inner  life  which  Shake- 
speare represents  is  unfitted  to  the  capacity  of  audiences  which  can  appre- 
ciate only  a  story,  action,  or  vociferous  talk;  (2)  acting,  even  of  a  great  sort, 
like  that  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  tends  to  level,  or  to  raise  to  the  same  level,  both 
bad  and  good  sentiments;  (3)  the  tragedy  of  the  mind,  of  I>ear  and  Othello, 
for  example,  may  not  be  represented  except  to  the  imagination;  (4)  stage 
mechanism  is  inadequate  to  picture  the  beauty  of  Shakespeare's  scenes,  as 
those  of  The  Tempest. 

It  is  evident  that  many  fallacies  are  rampant  in  Lamb's  argument.  His- 
torically, for  example,  it  is  a  fact  that  the  plays  were,  despite  Lamb's  interpre- 


NOTES  349 

tation,  written  to  be  acted.  Again  Lamb  confuses  the  distinction  between 
good  and  bad  acting.  P'urthermore,  there  is  no  reason  why  any  play  may  not 
be  acted,  since  we  learn  of  tragic  or  spiritual  happenings  only  by  words  and 
acts,  media,  that  is,  at  the  command  of  the  actor,  and  it  is  doubtful,  for  psycho- 
logical reasons,  whether  the  reading  of  plays,  which  Lamb  approves,  may  not 
be  objected  to  on  much  the  same  grounds  as  the  seeing  of  the  stage  presenta- 
tion. Such  phrases,  too,  as  "I  am  not  arguing  that  Hamlet  should  not  be 
acted,  but  how  much  Hamlet  is  made  another  thing  by  being  acted"  (p.  224), 
contain  fallacies;  for  that  sentence  implies  an  absolute  Hamlet,  which  is 
impossible.  Lamb's  objection  would  apply  to  awy  interpretation  or  reading, 
and  yet  Lamb,  with  charming  inconsistence,  practically  allows  us  to  im- 
agine any  Hamlet  we  like;  for  he  says  (p.  222)  that  in  seeing  a  Shakespearian 
play,  "We  have  let  go  a  dream,  in  quest  of  an  unattainable  substance." 
Otlier  paradoxes  will  appear  to  the  reader. 

"The  truth  is,"  to  use  a  phrase  of  Lamb's  since  widely  employed  by 
many  impressionists,  that  Lamb's  criticism  is  hardly  more  than  the  expres- 
sion of  his  personal  predilection,  put  in  an  eloquent  form.  The  fundamental 
premise  quoted  in  the  first  paragraph  of  this  note  is  strictly  undemonstrable. 
It  is  one  of  the  curiosities  of  criticism,  both  historically  and  psychologically, 
to  note  how  different  this  premise  is  from  that  which  a  century  and  more  ear- 
lier assumed  Shakespeare  to  be  a  barbarian.  No  more  really  rational 
grounds  can  be  assigned  for  one  than  for  the  other;  but  the  change  in  taste 
is  extreme.  It  is  a  matter  of  curiosity,  in  like  manner,  to  note  the  reasons 
which  Lamb's  great  contemporaries,  Coleridge,  Hazlitt,  De  Quincey,  and 
others,  gave  for  holding  a  premise  akin  to  that  of  Lamb.  Shakespeare  was 
to  all  these  men,  in  the  words  of  De  Quincey,  "the  glory  of  the  human  intel- 
lect" (Shakespeare,  1838),  yet  the  reasons  why  he  was  so  great  differ  with 
their  authors.  His  imaginative  height  is  what  strikes  Lamb;  with  Coleridge, 
for  example,  it  is  some  six  or  eight  qualities  of  his  mind  (Lectures  on  Shake- 
speare), whereas  De  Quincey  lays  especial  stress  on  what  might  be  called 
Shakespeare's  intellectual  contribution.  These  dicta  are,  of  course,  quite 
as  illuminating  with  regard  to  the  personality  of  the  authors  as  with  regard  to 
Shakespeare,  and  they  very  well  illustrate  the  role  played  by  temperament 
and  predilection  in  criticism.  They  are  really  a  very  dignified  expression  of 
likes  and  dislikes.  Their  strength  lies  in  the  earnest  and  brilliant  expression 
of  the  authors,  and  they  may  be  regarded  as  literature  rather  than  as  science. 

1.  State  Lamb's  thesis  and  show  the  points  that  he  makes  in  support  of  it. 
What  is  the  demonstration  or  evidence  for  his  various  positions?  What  is 
meant  by  such  phrases  as  "a  proper  reverence  for  Shakespeare"?  (p.  229.) 

2.  Analyze  such  dicta  as  "The  love-dialogues  of  Romeo  and  Juliet,  those 
silver-sweet  sounds  of  lovers'  tongues  by  night;  the  more  intimate  sacred 
sweetness  of  nuptial  colloquy  between  an  Othello  or  a  Posthumus  with  their 
married  wives,  all  those  delicacies  which  are  so  delightful  in  the  reading  — 
by  the  inherent  fault  of  stage  representation,"  etc.  (p.  223),  with  a  view  to 
testing  its  universal  soundness  and  to  showing  how  much  truth  it  contains. 
How  does  the  passage  containing  the  words  "  torn  so  inhumanly  from  its  living 
place  and  principle  of  continuity  in  the  play"  (p.  222)  square  with  Lamb's 
own  procedure  in  his  Specimens  of  the  English  Dramatic  Poets? 

3.  Compare  the  thesis  held  by  Lamb  and  his  method  with  the  theses  and 
the  method  of  contemporary  paradoxical  critics,  such  as  Tolstoy  in  What  is 
Art  ?   or  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  in  the  introductions  to  his  various  volumes  of 


350  NOTES 

plays,  or  Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton  in  Varied  Types,  Heretics,  and  his  biographies 
of  Browning  and  Dickens.  What  are  the  sanctions  for  the  opinions  held  by 
these  critics? 

4.  Trace  the  growth  of  critical  tests  regarding  Shakespeare  from  the  time 
of  Dryden  to  Lamb,  with  a  view  to  showing  the  steps  by  which  the  change 
took  place.  Ascertain  the  influence  of  Lamb's  position  on  contemporary  and 
subsequent  criticism.  These  are  very  large  topics,  too  large  for  most  college 
students  to  handle.  One  should  have  recourse  to  Professor  Saintsbury's 
History  of  Criticism,  Professor  Lounsbury's  The  Text  of  Shakespeare,  and 
many  other  books,  besides  the  periodicals  of  the  time  and  the  work  of  critics 
such  as  Johnson,  Coleridge,  and  Hazlitt. 

XL     HENRY    JAMES 

As  is  said  in  the  opening  paragraph,  Mr.  James's  essay  on  The  Art  of 
Fiction  is  a  discussion  of  the  address  of  the  same  name  by  the  late  Sir  Walter 
Besant,  delivered  at  the  Royal  Institution,  April  25,  1884.  The  present 
essay  provoked  a  lively  answer  from  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  entitled  A 
Humble  Rejnonstrance,  originally  published  in  Longmans'  Magazine  (v.  p.  139) 
and  since  reprinted  in  Memories  and  Portraits.  The  purport  of  Besant's 
address  is  to  be  gathered  from  Mr.  James's  pages;  but  it  would  be  an  illu- 
minating study  in  criticism  for  the  reader  to  examine  the  material,  the  point 
of  view,  and  the  sanctions  of  other  essays  and  books  on  the  subject.  (See 
Gayley  and  Scott,  Introduction,  and  my  Specimens  of  Narration  for  more 
or  less  complete  bibliography.) 

The  present  discussion,  as  Mr.  James  is  fond  of  reiterating,  assumes  the 
point  of  view  of  the  producer.  All  that  the  latter  is  really  obliged  to  do  is  to 
make  his  treatment  of  whatever  subject  he  may  choose  an  interesting  one. 
He  should  be  bound  by  no  canons  and  by  no  rules,  except  the  artistic  obliga- 
tion of  getting  the  best  possible  execution  for  his  material.  Unlike  Besant, 
Mr.  James  gives  no  directions  for  the  writing  of  novels  and  no  counsel  to  the 
reader  for  judging  their  worth,  except  such  as  are  implied  in  such  words  as 
"treatment"  and  "interesting."  The  vagueness  of  these  terms  Mr.  James 
admits  when  he  says  that  no  two  readers  will  be  interested  in  or  impressed 
by  the  same  thing.  Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  Mr.  James's  criteria  have  noth- 
ing at  all  absolute  in  them;  the  treatment  and  the  question  of  excellence  is 
related,  not  to  an  ideal  of  novel  writing,  but  to  the  material  and  the  artistic 
impulse  of  the  writer.  In  practically  denying  the  ideal  and  the  absolutely 
good,  of  which  actual  novels  would  be,  as  it  were,  more  or  less  ine.xact  repli- 
cas, he  is,  philosophically,  quite  at  variance  with  the  fundamental  assump- 
tions of  the  four  essays  on  poetry  which  follow  this. 

Like  these  essays,  Mr.  James's  work  might  be  called  constructive  as  op- 
posed to  destructive  in  that  it  tries  to  establish  a  principle  for  the  understand- 
ing of  an  art.  Mr.  James  would  doubtless  repudiate  the  term  constructive, 
on  the  same  grounds  which  make  such  terms  as  romantic  and  the  novel  of 
character  appear  to  him  to  be  clumsy  and  inexact,  and  he  would  strictly  be 
right.  No  vigorous  piece  of  destructive  criticism  such,  for  example,  as  Macau- 
lay's  essay  on  Montgomery,  fails  to  imply  some  constructive  principle;  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  a  piece  of  so-called  constructive  criticism  by  implication 
is  damaging  to  works  which  do  not  accord  with  the  principle  which  it  is  estab- 
lishing.    It  is  impossible,  actually,  with  the  same  exactness  which  would 


NOTES  351 

characterize  a  building  contractor,  to  say  in  literature  where  destructiveness 
ends  and  constructiveness  begins.  However,  the  critical  question  here  at 
issue  regards  the  proof  of  Mr.  James's  skilfully  wrought  and  brilliantly 
phrased  exposition. 

1.  Explain  the  thesis  of  the  essay.  What  sort  of  counsel  has  Besant 
offered  to  writers?  What  is  Mr.  James's  answer  to  these  points?  What  is 
meant  in  this  essay  by  such  terms  as  the  "novel  of  incident,"  the  "novel  of 
character,"  the  "romance,"  "the  good  novel  and  the  bad  novel,"  "life," 
"  taste,"  "  morality,"  "  interesting,"  etc.  ?  Why,  of  the  novels  cited,  does  Mr. 
James  call  some  failures  and  some  successes?  What  is  Mr.  James's  test  for 
a  novel?  Explain  and  test  such  sentences  as  "Catching  the  very  note  and 
trick,  the  strange  irregular  rhythm  of  life,  that  is  the  attempt  whose  strenuous 
force  keeps  Fiction  upon  her  feet"  (p.  250). 

2.  On  what  grounds  can  Mr.  James's  position  be  supported  or  be  over- 
thrown ?  Are  his  views  rational  or  are  they  personal  ?  What  light  is  afforded 
by  the  fact  that  the  distinctions  which  Mr.  James  denies  are  actually  in  com- 
mon use?  Consult  Bliss  Perry:  A  Study  of  Prose  Fiction;  W.  L.  Cross: 
The  Development  of  the  English  Novel;  W.  D.  Howells's  Criticism  and 
Fiction,  etc. 

XII.     EDGAR   ALLAN   POE 

Poe's  very  brief  exposition  of  the  way  in  which  he  wrote  The  Raven  is, 
whether  strictly  serious  or  not,  an  admirable  piece  of  literary  analysis.  It  is 
so  clear  that  it  needs  httle  further  comment,  but  one  may  remark  that  it  is 
in  general  an  exposition,  first,  of  the  theory  of  poetry  and,  next,  of  the  ap- 
plication of  the  principles  laid  down  to  a  particular  situation.  If  Poe's  prem- 
ises are  sound,  —  that  a  poem,  depending  as  it  does  on  conditions  of  limited 
duration,  must  be  short  in  length,  that  beauty  must  be  its  object,  that  the 
most  beautiful  matter  is  the  idea  of  death,  etc.,  —  then  it  would  follow  that 
The  Raven  must  be  the  most  beautiful  poem  in  existence,  unless  possibly  sur- 
passed by  poems  of  a  like  character  and  better  execution.  With  this  extreme 
judgment  criticism  would  hardly  be  in  accord,  and  the  divergence  would  re- 
late either  to  the  theory  or  to  its  working  out  in  metre,  refrain,  machinery, 
and  the  like.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  poetry  has  never  been  successfully  defined 
to  square  with  all  theories;  the  essays  of  Arnold,  Coleridge,  and  Shelley  in 
this  volume  are  based  on  other  fundamental  conceptions  as  difficult  to  demon- 
strate as  this.  Poe  is  consistent  in  his  theory;  it  is  the  same  as  that  enun- 
ciated in  his  well-known  Poetic  Principle. 

1.  State  Poe's  theory  of  poetry,  showing  what,  in  his  view,  are  the  char- 
acteristics of  a  poem.  Show  how  these  are  applied  in  the  composition  of  The 
Raven.  What  does  he  mean  by  "incident,"  "tone,"  "effect,"  "universality," 
etc.?  Apply  these  principles  to  such  poems  as  Ulalume  and  Annabel  Lee. 
Do  they  apply  to  typical  lyrics  of  Wordsworth,  Shelley,  Tennyson,  Browning, 
and  others?     On  what  proof  do  they  rest  ? 

2.  What  of  the  title  of  this  essay  as  related  to  the  matter  under  discus- 
sion? 

XIII.     MATTHEW   ARNOLD 

The  structure  of  Arnold's  essay,  like  that  of  Poe's,  is  clear  and  simple. 
The  essav  consists  of  two  parts,  a  statement  of  the  principles  of  procedure  and 
the  application  of  them  to  typical  examples.     The  principles  of  procedure 


352  NOTES 

are  the  recognition  of  poetry  as  a  thing  of  supreme  value  and  importance,  the 
consequent  necessity  of  holding  fast  to  the  best  poetry,  the  avoidance  of  the 
fallacies  of  the  historical  estimate  and  the  personal  estimate,  and  the  em- 
ployment of  touchstones  as  the  best  means  of  determining  what  real  poetry 
is.  If  this  theory  is  right  and  if  it  can  be  applied  fairly,  it  is  evident,  as  with 
Poe's  essay,  that  Arnold's  particular  judgments  must  be  sound.  The  main 
critical  question  at  issue,  then,  regards  Arnold's  theory. 

With  regard  to  his  theory,  two  facts  are  evident.  Unlike  Poc's  idea  of 
poetry,  which  was  restricted  to  beauty,  this  is  substantially  restricted  to  moral 
values:  poetry  is  the  rounder-out  of  all  human  activities;  it  is  "the  breath 
and  finer  spirit  of  all  knowledge";  at  its  best  it  "will  be  found  to  have  a  power 
of  forming,  sustaining,  and  delighting  us,  as  nothing  else  can."  Again 
there  is,  under  this  mainly  moral  view,  the  implication  and  assumption  that 
there  is  a  perfect  "accent"  or  ideal  of  poetry  which  finds  its  nearest  approxi- 
mation in  the  quotations  of  the  celebrated  "  touchstones."  It  is  in  the  light  of 
this  ideal,  of  course,  that  these  quoted  passages  become  touchstones.  The 
main  question  of  the  value  of  Arnold's  essay,  aside  from  its  being  merely  an 
expression  of  personal  opinion,  would  relate  to  the  substantiation  of  this  ideal, 
of  these  touchstones,  and  the  minor  questions  would  relate  to  the  testing  of 
particular  poets  according  to  them. 

Whatever  one's  findings  might  be  on  such  a  question  as  this,  when  applied 
also  to  other  essays  of  Arnold,  —  and  on  this  point  such  critics  as  Mr.  J.  M. 
Robertson  (Modern  Humanists)  and  Mr.  Swinburne  (Miscellanies)  have 
spoken  in  no  uncertain  terms,  —  there  remains  the  historical  question  of  the 
value  of  Arnold's  criticism  with  regard  to  the  awakening  of  interest  in  litera- 
ture, to  the  increasing  of  our  knowledge  of  foreign  literature,  to  the  eternally 
necessary  plea  for  greater  breadth  and  catholicity  of  judgment  and  taste. 
In  these  respects,  at  least,  he  is  an  important  critic. 

One  thing  has  tended  to  obscure  critical  issues,  of  whatever  sort,  with 
Arnold.  He  is  the  master  of  a  style  of  great  order  and  luciditv,  but  of  such 
pervasive  assumption  of  superiority  and  finality  of  judgment  that  he  either 
immensely  attracts  or  very  much  repels  readers,  according  to  their  tempera- 
ment. His  constant  laying  down  of  the  law  is  very  good  for  the  sustaining 
of  those  who  need  the  sustaining  that  the  law  supplies,  but  it  sometimes  annoys 
people  who  themselves  prefer  to  enunciate  the  dogma,  just  as  such  severely 
final  criticism  finds  little  acceptance  among  people  of  an  easier  temperament. 
"Moriemini  in  peccatis  vestris,  —  ye  shall  die  in  your  sins,"  if  you  don't 
believe  as  I  do  about  morals  and  style,  is  hardly  fair  as  a  final  argument  about 
disputed  points. 

1.  What  is  the  occasion  of  Arnold's  essay?  Make  an  analvsis  of  tne 
main  points  of  this  essay  with  a  view  to  showing  the  text  or  thesis  and  the 
illustration. 

2.  What  does  Arnold  mean  by  such  phrases  as  "  conceive  of  poetry  worth- 
ily," "the  high  destinies  of  poetry,"  "a  criticism  of  life."  (Cf.  the  essay  on 
Wordsworth  in  Essays  in  Criticism:  Second  Series),  "the  best,"  "the  really 
excellent,"  a  "real  estimate,"  the  "historical  estimate,"  "the  personal  esti- 
mate," "high  poetic  truth  and  seriousness,"  a  "classic"  and  "  cla.5.si- 
cal,"  "liquid"  and  "fluid,"  "accent,"  "the  real  Burns,"  "laws  of  poetic 
truth  and  poetic  beauty,"  "the  sound  and  unsound,  or  only  half  sound," 
"the  true  and  untrue,  or  only  half  true"?  What  is  implied  in  all  these 
phrases  with  regard  to  Arnold's  standards  of  criticism?     What  is  implied  in 


NOTES  353 

such  a  sentence  as  this  (p.  273):  "To  trace  the  labour,  the  attempts,  the 
weaknesses,  the  failures  of  a  genuine  classic,  to  acquaint  one's  self  with  his 
time  and  his  Hfe  and  his  historical  relationships,  is  mere  literary  dilettantism 
unless  it  has  that  clear  sense  and  deeper  enjoyment  for  its  end?" 

3.  What  demonstration  is  there  for  the  implied  principles  in  the  foregoing 
quotation,  either  in  history,  in  common  consent,  or  in  ethical  and  artistic 
theory?  To  what  degree  can  estimates  be  other  than  "personal"?  How 
far  do  Arnold's  seem  to  you  to  be  personal?  Consult  his  hfe,  with  a  view  to 
seeing  how  far  his  temperament  and  training  influenced  his  judgments  and 
was  responsible  for  his  taste.  On  what  principle  does  he  choose  his  tests 
and  "touchstones"?  In  these  tests  does  he  recognize  different  genres  of 
literature,  or  is  it  clear  that  the  epic  and  dramatic  genres,  from  which  all  his 
"touchstones"  are  taken,  were  to  him  the  highest  type?  Compare  his  say- 
ing, with  regard  to  Burns's  bacchanalian  poetry  (p.  288):  "There  is  some- 
thing in  it  of  bravado,  something  that  makes  us  feel  that  we  have  not  the 
man  speaking  to  us  in  his  real  voice :  something,  therefore,  poetically  un- 
sound." Do  Arnold's  quotations  seem  to  be  predominantly  grave  ?  Why  are 
such  grave  subjects  necessarily  of  the  highest  quality  ?  Compare  Poe  on  The 
Philosophy  of  Composition.  Is  the  following  a  fair  equation?  "If  we  are 
thoroughly  penetrated  by  their  power,  we  shall  find  that  we  have  acquired 
a  sense  enabling  us,  whatever  poetry  may  be  laid  before  us,  to  feel  the  degree 
in  which  a  high  poetical  quality  is  present  or  wanting  there  "  (p.  277)  =  If 
we  immerse  ourselves  in  one  sort  of  poetry,  we  shall  be  immersed  in  it,  and 
shall  be  impervious  to  poetry  of  a  different  kind.     If  not  fair,  why? 

4.  Test  by  your  own  impressions  of  Ward's  English  Poets  the  truth  of 
Arnold's  assertions  in  the  paragraph  beginning  "The  idea  of  tracing  historic 
origins,"  etc.  (p.  273).  On  the  face  of  the  lines  quoted  on  p.  275,  is  it  fair  to 
say  that  "we  are  in  another  world"  ?  Are  the  lines  quoted  from  Dryden  and 
Pope,  on  p.  286,  fair  examples  of  the  work  of  those  poets  ?  Compare  Arnold's 
use  of  illustrative  quotation  in  On  Translating  Homer. 

5.  What  should  you  say  of  the  justness  and  value  of  many  of  Arnold's 
cautions,  such  as,  against  one's  being  too  much  engrossed  in  the  understand- 
ing and  analysis  of  machinery  to  get  the  more  important  ideas?  Or  this: 
"  Moreover  the  very  occupation  with  an  author,  and  the  business  of  exhibiting 
him,  disposes  us  to  afhrm  and  amplify  his  importance"  (p.  274)  ?  In  what 
respects  does  Arnold's  criticism  in  this  essay  seem  to  you  to  be  valuable? 
In  what  ways  defective? 

6.  Analyze  the  body  of  Arnold's  critical  work  with  a  view  to  showing  the 
material,  the  principles,  and  the  sanctions  which  he  expounded.  Compare 
it  in  these  respects  with  previous  and  contemporary  criticism. 

XIV.  SAMUEL  TAYLOR  COLERIDGE 

The  Biographia  Literaria,  from  which  the  present  selection  is  taken,  the 
Lectures  on  Shakespeare  (1811),  and  the  Lectures  on  Literature  and  Literary 
Subjects  (181&)  contain  what  is  most  valuable  of  Coleridge's  critical  ideas.  In 
general,  in  these  works  Coleridge  made  an  appeal  to  a  body  of  phenomena 
and  used  a  critical  method  much  in  advance  of  his  more  dogmatic  contem- 
poraries, such  as  Jeffrey.  The  main  principles  on  which  he  based  his  criti- 
cism were  (i)  a  theory  of  poetry,  deduced,  not  from  authority,  but  from  phi- 
losophy and,  what  were  to  him,  the  facts  of  language,  logic,  and  psychology 

2A 


354  NOTES 

(as  he  understood  these  matters) ;  (2)  a  consideration  of  the  actual  phenomena 
as  represented  in  the  current  vogue  of  an  author,  a  complete,  rather  than  a 
partial,  view  of  an  author's  production,  the  purpose  of  the  author  as  stated  or 
revealed  in  an  interpretation  of  his  work,  and  an  analysis  of  the  qualities  of 
his  style;  and  (3)  a  feeling  for  what  is  good  in  poetry  —  perhaps  his  ultimate 
test,  and  certainly  a  personal  one. 

The  present  selection  well  illustrates  at  least  two  of  these  principles.  The 
desire  to  find  a  definition  of  poetry  and  to  illustrate  that  definition  by  specific 
reference  to  Shakespeare's  poems  is  habitual  and  characteristic  of  Coleridge's 
desire  to  find  a  satisfactory  deiinition  of  poetry,  not  in  verse,  or  in  authority, 
or  in  history,  but  in  terms  of  the  innate  nature  of  the  medium.  "Nothing," 
he  says  (p.  297),  "  can  permanently  please  which  does  not  contain  in  itself  the 
reason  why  it  is  so;  and  not  otherwise."  In  the  illustrations  from  Venus 
and  Adonis  of  the  nature  of  poetical  power,  he  deals,  as  it  were,  with  the 
spiritual  content  of  the  poems  as  e.xpressing  itself  in  the  sweetness  of  verse, 
the  imagery,  etc.  The  same  method  of  criticism  is  to  be  observed  in  the 
famous  enumeration  of  the  characteristic  defects  and  excellencies  of  Words- 
worth {Biographia  Literaria,  XXII.)  and  the  admirable  qualities  (there  are 
no  defects)  of  Shakespeare.  Thus,  again,  using  Venus  and  Adonis  (Lectures 
of  1818;  Collected  Works,  Vol.  IV.  pp.  46-50)  as  illustration,  —  this  time 
of  Shakespeare's  consummate  power  as  a  poet,  —  he  made  him  out  to  be 
possessed  of  the  following  characteristics:  deep  feeling  and  exquisite  sense 
for  beauty,  entire  command  of  his  feelings,  impersonality  of  expression, 
affectionate  love  for  natural  objects,  fancy,  "the  indwelling  power  of  the 
imagination,"  "endlessactivity  of  thought,"  and  "a  most  profound,  energetic, 
and  philosophic  mind."  Evidently  all  these  are  spiritual  categories;  they 
are  not,  like  De  Quincey's  catalogue  of  Shakespeare's  values,  matters  of  ob- 
jective contribution,  or,  as  in  Poe,  a  matter  of  mechanically  harmonious  rela- 
tion of  parts  to  a  subject  of  given  beauty. 

The  other  point  is  clearer.  It  has  to  do  with  the  palpable  fact  of  an  author's 
vogue.  In  stating  (p.  295)  the  fact  of  Wordsworth's  popularity,  Coleridge 
evidently  makes  use  of  an  important,  and  too  often  neglected,  sort  of  phe- 
nomena. (Cf.  Bagehot  on  Dickens.)  His  subsequent  criticism  of  Words- 
worth is  an  attempt  to  find  out  why  the  fact  should  be  so  by  reason  of  the 
nature  of  Wordsworth's  poems. 

It  has  been  thought  advisable  to  dwell  at  this  length  on  the  nature  of  Cole- 
ridge's criticism  because  his  principles  have  become  pervasive  of  much  later 
criticism  (cf.  Mill:  Coleridge  in  Dissertations  and  Discussions,  Vol.  II.). 
Compared  with  his  contemporary  Jeffrey,  they  indicate  a  wholly  different 
tenor  of  mind  and  a  far  more  enduring  influence.  They  are  alive  to-day; 
whereas  Jeffrey's  method  is  usually  sterile,  brilliant  though  it  be.  Whether 
Coleridge  borrowed  his  ideas  or  not  need  not  be  elaborated  here  (cf.  J.  M. 
Robertson :  Coleridge  in  New  Essays  toward  a  Critical  Method) ;  we  are  sim- 
ply dealing  with  the  phenomena  presented  in  his  prose.  Comjjared  with  his 
great  predecessors  he  attached  more  importance  to  facts  of  the  vogue  and  pur- 
pose of  an  author  and  to  jjhilosophy,  analysis,  and  feeling.  Thus  there  is 
with  him  greater  relativity  of  treatment,  a  more  flexible  method,  and,  though 
he  aimed  at  elaborate  and  ultimate  truth,  more  impressionism. 

The  circumstances  of  the  present  selection  so  well  explain  themselves  that 
little  further  comment  is  necessary.  Wordsworth's  important  essay,  which 
is  the  point  of  departure  for  Coleridge's  criticism  in  this  and  the  following 


NOTES  355 

chapters  of  Biographia  Literaria,  was  prefixed  to  the  second  edition  of  the 
Lyrical  Ballads,  and  should  be  read.  It  is  to  be  had  in  any  good  edition  of 
Wordsworth's  complete  works. 

1.  State  Coleridge's  fundamental  idea  of  poetry,  and  show  how  this  is 
borne  out  in  the  examination  of  Venus  and  Adonis.  What  are  the  "two  car- 
dinal points"  of  poetry  according  to  Coleridge  ?  Compare  this  idea  of  poetry 
with  that  of  Poe,  Arnold,  and  Shelley.  What  is  the  evidence  in  favor  of  it 
and  of  them  ? 

2.  Expound  any  critical  principles  or  bases  of  judgment  that  you  note  in 
Coleridge's  work. 

XV.     PERCY   BYSSHE   SHELLEY 

The  justly  celebrated  Defence  oj  Poetry  was  originally  written,  as  its  title 
suggests,  in  a  polemic  vein,  as  an  answer  to  Peacock's  The  Four  Ages  oj 
Poetry.  In  its  published  form,  much  of  the  controversial  matter  was  cast 
out,  and  only  one  or  two  indications  remain  of  its  controversial  nature.  The 
essay  as  it  stands  is  among  the  most  elocjuent  expositions  that  exist  of  the  ideal 
nature  and  essential  value  of  poetry.  Its  chief  distinction  lies  in  the  sincerity 
and  enthusiasm  of  the  author. 

Like  several  other  essays  in  this  volume,  as  those  of  Bagehot  and  Pater, 
it  is  based  on  one  of  those  fundamental  distinctions  —  here  that  between 
reason  and  imagination  —  which  Coleridge  so  frequently  expounded,  and 
which  here  serves  as  a  point  of  departure.  There  are  two  main  parts:  (i) 
the  nature  of  poetry,  as  something  connate  with  man,  and  poetical  expres- 
sion; and  (2)  the  effect  of  poetry  upon  mankind.  This  latter  part,  though 
even  more  eloquent  than  the  former,  is  more  rambling.  The  critical  question 
at  issue  in  both  is  a  very  fundamental  one,  and  is  practically  the  same  as  that 
which  has  been  debated  for  many  years  between  two  opposed  schools  of  ethics 
and  philosophy,  the  intuitional  and  the  titilitarian,  and  is  to-day  rife  betwixt 
rationalists  and  pragmatists.  Of  the  truth  of  Shelley's  main  thesis  there  is 
occasion  for  much  discussion,  but  of  his  own  vigour  and  sincerity  there  can 
be  no  question. 

1.  State  Shelley's  thesis  in  this  essay.  Show  in  detail  the  topics  which  he 
treats.  What  is  his  criterion  of  the  worth  of  various  poets  whom  he  mentions  ? 
What  is  his  criterion  for  the  determining  good  and  bad  poetry?  What  does 
he  mean  by  such  terms  as  "reason,"  "imagination,"  "taste,"  "the  inde- 
structible order,"  "universal,"  "wit  and  humour,"  "a  story,"  "utility," 
"a  single  condition  of  epic  truth,"  "the  poet,"  "poetry  "  in  its  broad  and 
in  its  restricted  sense  ?  What  are  the  reasons  for  the  superiority  of  poetry  in 
its  restricted  sense  over  other  forms  of  art?  Why  is  Lear  to  be  preferred  to 
Agamemnon  or  CEdipus  Tyrannus  ?  Why  were  choruses  in  Greek  drama  of 
great  poetical  importance? 

2.  What  are  the  sanctions  for  Shelley's  view  of  the  idea  and  value  of 
poetry?     How  is  his  generalization  supported? 

3.  Compare  Shelley's  idea  of  poetry,  his  method  and  his  proofs,  with  those 
of  Poe,  Arnold,  and  Coleridge. 


356  NOTES 


List  of  Books  referred  to  in  the  Introduction  and  the  Notes. 

Alden,  R.  M.     English  Verse.     New  York.     1903. 

Arnold,  Matthew.     Essays  in  Criticism.     New  York.     1883. 

Essays  in  Criticism,  Second  Series.     London  and  New  York.     1888, 
On  Translating  Homer.     New  York.     1883. 
Bagehot,  Walter.     Literary  Studies.     2  vols.     London  and  New  York. 

1891. 
Benson,  A.  C.     Walter  Pater.     In  the  English  Men  of  Letters.     London 

and  New  York.     1906. 
Besant,  Walter.     The  Art  of  Fiction.     Boston.     1884. 
Brewster,  W.  T.     Representative  Essays  on  the  Theory  of  Style.     New 
York.     1905. 
Specimens  of  Narration.     New  York.     1895. 
Studies  in  Structure  and  Style.     New  York.     1896. 
Brunetifere,  F.     Uevolution  des  genres  dans  I'histoire  de  la  litterature. 

Paris.     1890. 
Carpenter,    G.    R.     Henry    Wadsworth    Longfellow.     In    the    Beacon 
Biographies.     Boston.     1901. 
Modern  English  Prose  (with  W.  T.  Brewster).     New  York.     1904. 
Chesterton,  G.  K.     Robert  Browning.     In  the  English  Men  of  Letters. 
London.     1903. 
Charles  Dickens,  a  Critical  Study.     New  York.     1906. 
Heretics.     New  York.     1905. 
Varied  Types.     New  York.     1905. 
Coleridge,  S.  T.     Complete  Works.     7  vols.     New  York.     1853.     Vol. 
III.,  Biographia  Literaria.     Vol.  IV.,  Lectures  on  Shakespeare. 
Collins,  J.  C.     Ephemera  Critica.     New  York.     1902. 

Jonathan  Swift.     London.     1893. 
Courthope,  W.   J.     Life  in  Poetry,  Law  in  Taste.     2  vols.     London. 

1901. 
Craik,  H.     The  Life  of  Jonathan  Swift.     London.     1882. 
Cross,  W.  L.     The  Development  of  the  English  Novel.     New  York. 

1899. 
De  Quincey,  T.     Collected  Works,   ed.    by  David  Masson.     14  vols. 
1889,  1890.     Vol.  II.,  Literary  Reminiscences.     Vol.  IV.,  Shake- 
speare. 
Dryden,  see  Ker. 

Erskine,  J.     The  Elizabethan  Lyric.     New  York.     1904. 
Forster,  J.     The  Life  of  Jonathan  Swift.     London.     1875. 
Gates,  L.  E.     Selections  from  the  Essays  of  Francis  Jeffrey.     Boston. 

1894. 
Gayley,  C.  M.,  and  Scott,  F.  N.     An  Introduction  to  the  Materials  and 
Methods  of  Literary  Criticism.     Vol.  I.     Boston.     1897. 


NOTES  SSI 

Gummere,  F.  B.     A  Handbook  of  Poetics  for  Students  of  English  Verse. 

Boston.     1885. 
Harrison,  Frederic.     Tennyson,  Ruskin,  Mill,  and  Other  Literary  Esti- 
mates.    New  York.     1900. 
Hazlitt,  W.     See  Waller. 

Hennequin,  E.     La  Critique  scientijique.     Paris.     1888. 
Howells,  W.  D.     Criticism  and  Fiction.     New  York.     1891. 
James,  H.     Partial  Portraits.     London  and  New  York.     1888. 
James,  W.     The  Varieties  of  Religious  E.xperience.     New  York.      1902. 
Jeffrey,  F.     See  Gates. 

Johnson,  S.     The  Lives  of  the  Poets,  ed.  by  G.  B.  Hill.     3  vols.     Ox- 
ford.    1905. 
Ker,  W.  P.     The  Essays  of  John  Dryden.     2  vols.     Oxford.     1900. 
Lamb,  C.     The  Poems,  Plays,  and  Miscellaneous  Essays   of  Charles 

Lamb,  in  Collected  Works,  ed.  by  Alfred  Ainger.     6  vols.     New 

York.     1885. 
Specimens  of  the  English  Dramatic  Poets  who  lived  about  the  time  of 

Shakespeare.     London.     1901.     (Bohn.) 
Lamont,  H.     English  Composition.     New  York.     1906. 
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1898. 
Lounsbury,  T.  R.     Studies  in  Chaucer.     3  vols.     New  York.     1892. 
The  Text  of  Shakespeare.    Vol.  III.  of  Shakespearian  Wars.    New 

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Lowell,  J.  R.    The  Writings  of — .     10  vols.    Boston.     1892.    Vol.  IV., 

Wordsworth,  Dante. 
Mackail,  J.  W.     The  Life  of  William  Morris.     2  vols.     London.     1899. 
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Nichol,  J.     Carlyle.     In  the  English  Men  of  Letters. 
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The  Renaissance.     London  and  New  York.     1890. 
Payne,  W.  M.     American  Literary  Criticism.     New  York  and  London. 

1904. 
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358  NOTES 

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NOTES  359 

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by  John  Morley.     New  York  and  London.     1889.     Essays  in 

the  appendix. 


INDEX 


In  this  index  proper  names  appear  in  small  capitals,  titles  in  italics,  and  topics  (including 
fictitious  characters)  in  small  type. 


Absalom  and  Achitophel,  200. 

Academy,  136. 

Accent,  Quantity,  and  Feet,  164. 

Accius,  321. 

Account  of  the  Williams  Murders,  17, 
18. 

Achilles,  186,  234,  276,  314. 

Acting,  Elocution  in,  223-225,  fashion 
for  acting  Shakespeare,  221,  identi- 
fication of  actors  and  parts,  221-222, 
impossibility  of  acting  Lear,  231-232, 
its  deadening  effect,  222-223,  scenes 
suitable  to,  223,  tendency  to  level 
distinctions,  228-229,  vulgar  esti- 
mates of,  229. 

Actor,  see  Acting. 

Addison,  xxvii,  xxxii,  31,  284,  287,  318, 

345- 
Adonis,  302. 
Adorni,  37. 
^lius  Lamia,  17. 
^neas,  185,  186. 
jEneid,  185,  198,  326. 
^scHYLus,  22,  310. 
^sop,  61. 

Agamemnon,  317,  355. 
Ajax,  181. 
Al  Aaraaf,  141. 
Alcibiades,  21. 
Alden,  346,  356. 
Alexander,  the  Great,  21,  22. 
Alexander  Pope,  quoted,  32-33;  25,  31 ; 

(Stephen's),  338,  358. 
Alexis,  297. 
Allan,  128,  129,  130. 
Allen,  Benjamin,  95. 
Allen,  George,  218. 
Alliteration,  209. 
American  humor,  164-165. 
American  Literary  Criticism,  vi,  357. 


Anacreon,  23,  48,  297. 

Analects  from  Richter,  25. 

Analysis  of  composition,  258-259. 

Analysis  of  the  Raven,  260-268. 

Anaxagoras,  22. 

Ancient  Mariner,  xxviii,  295. 

Anecdotage,  17. 

Annabel  Lee,  151,  351. 

Annus  Mirabilis,  345. 

Antigone  of  Sophocles,  25,  31. 

Apollonius  Rhodius,  326. 

ApPELLES,   22. 

Appian,  23. 

Appreciations,  in,  343,  357. 

Appreciative  criticism,  xix. 

Arachne  and  Pallas,  4. 

Archer,  xxvii. 

Arcite,  189,  199. 

Ariosto,  61,  302,  325. 

Aristophanes,  quoted,  304;  22,  200, 
291. 

Aristotle,  on  seriousness,  278;  xii, 
xiv,  xix,  22,  45,  198,  283,  344. 

Arnold,  definition  of  criticism,  x;  On 
the  study  of  poetry,  269-293 : 
classics,  true  and  false,  272-273,  282- 
284,  fallacies  in  the  estimating  of 
poetry,  271-275,  importance  of 
poetry,  269-270,  methods  of  study, 
273-275,  need  of  high  standards, 
270-271,  seriousness  in,  278;  sur- 
vey of  English  poetry,  279-293, 
"touchstones,"  275-278; 

Notes    on    Arnold,    3SI-3S3; 

Quoted,  X,   269,  345,  352.  353;  __ 

ix,   xi,   xviii,    xix,    xx,    xxii,    xxiii, 

XXV,  xxix,  xxxii,   83,    113,   141,  147, 

164,    166,    167,    340,  341,  342,   343, 

355.  356. 
Art  in  fiction,  240-241. 


361 


362 


INDEX 


Art  0}  Conversation,  25. 

Art  of  Fiction,  237-256,  350,  356. 

Art  Singing  and  Heart  Singing,  171. 

"Artemus  Ward,"  x. 

Artful  Dodger,  91,   100. 

Arthur  Gordon  Pym,  159. 

Arthur  Gordon  Pym,  160. 

Arthurs,  200. 

Assonance,  209. 

Atheist,  69. 

Augustus,  61,  191. 

Auld  Lang  Syne,  291. 

Austen,  256. 

Authority  oj  Criticism,  xiv,  358. 

Autobiographic  Sketches,  16,   17,  34. 

Autos,  317. 

Avenger,  34,  35. 

Bacon,  16,  22,  32,  57,  163,  309,  312, 

329.  333- 
Bagehot,  review  of  the  collected  works 

of  Dickens,  8o-iio;    notes  on,  341- 

342;     quoted,    342;     xvii,    xx,    xxiii, 

xxxi,  176,  343,  354,  355.  356. 

Bajazet,  223. 

Balfour,  176. 

Balzac,  160. 

Banks,  225. 

Barnaby  Rudge,  quoted,  85-86;  102, 
156,  169,  170,  257. 

Barnwell,  93,  225,  226,  230. 

"Barry  Cornwall,"  xxxi. 

BartJwlomew  Fair,  189. 

Bates,  Charley,  91,  100. 

Bathyllus,  297. 

Baucis,  188. 

Baucis  and  Philemon,  181. 

Baudelaire,  139,  140,  141,  143. 

Bavius,  335. 

Beacon  Biographies,  338. 

Beatrice,  123,  276,  324. 

Beauty,  260-261. 

Beethoven,  150,  152,  217. 

Behn,  66. 

Beleaguered  City,  146. 

Bells,  142,  144,  344- 

Belvidera,  228. 

Benson,  xvi,  356. 

Berenice,  139,   159,   178. 

Berkeley,  14,  15,  175,  207,  337. 

Bernard,  172. 


Besant,  Lecture  on  the  art  rf  fiction, 
237:  his  frankness,  238,  idea  of  iic- 
tion  as  a  fine  art,  240-241,  on  moral- 
ity in  fiction,  254-255,  on  selection, 
250-251,  on  the  "story,"  151-154; 
wrong  view  of  "laws,"  244-245, 
and  distinctions,  246-249; 

Quoted,243-244,25i;  350,351,356. 

Betterton,  223. 

BeTTESWORTH,    II. 

Beverley,  Mrs.,  228. 

Bible,  210. 

Biographia  Lileraria,  294,  343,  353,  354, 

355.  356- 
Biographical  criticism,  xv. 
Birrell,  xxvii,  134. 
Black  Cat,  158,  160. 
Blackmore,   66,   199,   201,  344. 
Blackwood's  Magazine,  34,   167. 
Blilhcdalc,  248. 
Boccaccio,    compared    with    Chaucer, 

183,  197-198;  influence  on  the  Italian 

tongue,  183;  187,  191,  194,  198,  199, 

327.  329.  345- 

BOILEAU,   62. 
BOLINGBROKE,    I,    II,    12. 

Borough,  73. 

Bossuet,  206. 

boswell,  xxx. 

Brahmin,  story  of  the,  60-61. 

Brewster,  Sir  David,  158. 

Brewster,  W.  T.,  x.xxi,  350,  356. 

Bride  oj  Abydos,  290. 

Broadway  Journal,  131,   i6g,  171. 

Brown,  131,  228,  234. 

Browne,  Sir  T.,  xxviii,  207,  210. 

Browne,  W.  H.,  161,  162,  163,  164,  172, 
176. 

Browning,  E.  B.,  142,  143,  147,  168. 

Browning,  R.,  xvii,  150,  351. 

Brunetiere,  339,   356. 

Brunetto  Latini,  279, 

Burke,  210. 

Burnet,  299. 

Burns,  admirers  of,  288-290,  great 
achievements  of,  291,  place  in  Eng- 
lish literature,  287,  "real"  Burns, 
287-288,  shortcomings,  288-290, 
particularly  his  lack  of  "high  serious- 
ness," 290;  quoted,  287,  288,  289,  290, 
291,  292;    280,  352. 


INDEX 


363 


Burton,  165,  166. 
Butler,  341. 

Byron,  quoted,  69;  ix,  69,  77,  109,  209, 
214,  215,  290,  292. 

C^DMON,  274. 

C^SAR,    19,   24. 

CcBsars,   16,   17,   19. 

Calderon,  317,  325,  329. 

Caleb  Williams,  257. 

California,  25. 

Calista,  228. 

Callimachus,  23. 

Calypso,  185. 

Camillus,  321. 

Campbell,  quoted,   70;    74. 

Canon,  The,  191. 

Canterbury  Talcs,  84,  182,  188,  191,  192, 

194,  280. 
Caricature,  99-100. 
Carlyle,  vi,  xxvii,  104,  133,  134,  136, 

137,  167,  206,  340,  344. 
Carlyle,   339,   344,    357- 
Caroline,  Queen,  ii. 
Carpenter,  xxxi,  338,  356. 
Carpenter's  young  wife,    194. 
Carteret,  8,  9. 
Cary,  77. 

Case  of  Monsieur  Valdemar,   139. 
Cask  of  Amontillado,  159. 
Cassio,  74. 
Casuistry,  25,  26. 

Casuistry  of  Roman  Meals,   17,  23,  24. 
Catholic  Reasons  for  Repealing  the  Test, 

2. 
Cato,  318. 

Catullus,  quoted,    190;    321. 
Ceylon,  17. 

Chanson  de  Roland,    quoted,  275;  274. 
Chapman,  285. 
Charlemagne,  274,  275. 
Charlemagne,  17. 
Charles  II.,  319. 
Charles  Dickens,  a  Critical  Study,  350, 

356. 

Charles  Lamb,  17,  18. 

CJmrtism,  104. 

Chateaubriand,  113. 

Chaucer,  charm  of,  281-282,  as  clas- 
sic, 282-283,  compared  with  Boc- 
caccio, 183,  197-198,  with  Ovid,  187- 


189,  effect  on  English,  183,  in  English 
poetry,  189,  genius,  192,  good 
sense,  189-190,  lack  of  "high  seri- 
ousness," 28^,  language,  194-197, 
life  and  opinions,  1 91-192,  liquid- 
ness,  282,  morals,  193-19  ,  need 
of  a  translation  of,  196-197,  natural- 
ness, 190,  originality,  197,  Palamon 
and  Arcite,  his  best  work,  198-199, 
seventeenth-century  view  of,  284, 
superiority  to  the  romance  poets, 
280,  variety,  193;  verse,  190;  quoted, 
194,  195.  281,  282;    XXV,  22,  84,  137, 

327.  329.  344,  345- 
Cheeryble,  88. 
Cherie,  253. 

CHESTEiRTON,  xiii,  xix,  xxvii,  349,  356. 
China,  17. 
Christabel,  295. 
Christian  of  Troyes,   quoted,   279; 

280. 
"Christopher  North,"  167. 
Church,  xxvii. 
Chuzzlewit,  Jonas,  90. 
ClBBER,   229. 

Cicero,    xii,    186,     312,    see   Tully. 
Cicero,  16,   17,   23,   24. 
Cinyras  and  Myrrha,  181. 
Clarissa,  223. 
Classic,  xxiv. 

Classic  poetry,    272-274,   282. 
Classification  of  literature,    xxxii,    338, 

341. 
Claudian,  326. 
Claverhouse,  i. 
Clemm,  Mrs.,  130,  136,  137. 
Clemm,  Virginia,  130. 
Cleveland,  quoted,  52,  54;    48. 
Cock  and  the  Fox,  188. 
Coleman,  177. 
Coleridge,  354. 
Coleridge,  H.,  341. 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  On  Poetry  and  the 

Poetic  Power,  294-306  (see  Poetry); 

notes    on,    353-355;     quoted,    351; 

i.x,  xii,  xvi,  xix,  xxv,  xxxi,  17,  21,  29, 

77,  148,  209,  210,  284,  343,  346,  349. 

350,  355.  356. 
Coleridge,  354. 

Coleridge  and  Opium-Eating,  Tj. 
Coleridge's  Complete  Works,   354,    356. 


364 


INDEX 


Collective  criticism,  xv-xvi. 

Collier,  200,  201,  344. 

Collins,  quoted,  ix;   xxvii,  338,  356. 

Colloquy  of  Monos  and  Una,  171. 

COLViN,  xxvii. 

Composition,  James  on,  240-245; 
Poe  on,  257-268. 

COMTE,   1 38. 

Conceits,  47. 

Confessions  of  an  English  Opium- 
Eater,  16,  17,  34,  39,  40. 

Confessions  of  a  Young  Man,  152. 

CONGREVE,   62. 

Consonance,  209-213. 

CONSTANTINE,  29. 

Constructive  criticism,  xxi. 

Convcrsati  n  of  Eiros  and  Cltarmian, 
171. 

Cook,  the,  193. 

Cooper,  i68. 

Cordelia,  231. 

Corn  ILLE,  xii. 

Costume,  effect  on  the  acting  of  Shake- 
speare, 23  -236. 

Colter's  Saturday  Night,  288. 

CouRTHORPE,  xiv,  xxvii,  356. 

Cowley,  quoted,  48-58  passim;  3, 
45.  194,  195.  196,  284,  339. 

COVVPER,  138. 

COXE,  6. 

Crabbe,  73. 

Craftsman,  12. 

Craik,  338,  356. 

Criticism  {see,  chiefly,  Literary  Criti- 
cism),   classification    of,    xv. 

Criticism  and  Fiction,  x,  351,  3  7. 

Cromwell,  138. 

Cross,  339,  351,  356. 

Cruikshank,  80. 

Custom  of  the  Country,  201. 

CuviER,  138. 

Daffodils,  122. 

Dame  Quickly,  228. 

Dante,  his.  loftiness,  282-283,  290; 
quoted,  72,  276,  282,  290,  324;  xii, 
xvii,  xxxi,  72,  136,  137,  203,  279,  310, 
313.  324,  325.  326,  327,  329. 

Dante,  Cary's  trans.,   77. 

Dante,  Lowell's,  xvii,  357. 

Daphne,  195. 


Dark  Ladie,  295. 

Daughter  of  Lebanon,  34,  40. 

David,  322. 

Davies,  Sir  John,  quoted,  300. 

Death,  a  Voyage,  54. 

Death  of  Mr.  Mill,  124. 

Decameron,  187. 

Defence  of  Philosophic  Doubt,  176. 

Defence  of  Poetry,  307-336,  355. 

Defoe,  154,  207,  210. 

Degeneresence,  172. 

Delany,  14. 

Demosthenes,  10,  22,  186. 

Denham,  48,  190. 

Dennis,  102. 

De  Quincey,  revievv.of  his  work,  16-44: 
as  critic,  31-32,  historian,  18,  19, 
humorist,  34-35,  imaginative  stylist, 
38-44,  "  impassioned"  prose,  in- 
tellectual quality,  39,  as  novelist, 
35-38,  originality,  23-24,  politics, 
30-31,  as  portrayer  of  contemporary 
life,  17-18,  student  of  economics, 
31,  his  sublimity,  34-3S.  theology, 
26-29,  works,  —  classification  of,  16- 
44,  his  own  classific -tion,  16;  princi- 
ples of  classification,  16-17,  —  classes: 
descriptive,  biographical,  and  his- 
torical writings,  17-24,  imaginative, 
33-44,  speculative,  didactic,  and 
critical,  24-33. 

Notes   on,   338-339; 
Quoted,      19-23,     28-29,     32-33. 
42-44,  156,  349; 

vi,    xxvii,    xxxi,    xxxii,    156,    210, 

343,  344,  354.  3S6- 
De  Quincey's  Collected  Works,  16,  21,  23, 

33,  356- 
De  Q  linrcy's  Writings:    Classification 

an  I  Review,  16-44. 
Descent  into  the  Maelstrom,  139,  160. 
Desdemona,  228,  232. 
Destructive  criticism,  xx. 
Development  of  the  English  Novel,  339, 

351,  356. 
Dialogues  of  Three  Templars  on  Political 

Economy,  25,  30. 
Diana,    195. 
Dice,  35. 
Dickens,  review  of  collected  works  by 

Bagehot,   80-110:    faUing  off  of  his 


INDEX 


365 


later  work,  105-106,  109-110,  his 
humor,  94-99,  as  illustration  of  the 
"unsymmetrical"  genius,  84-110, 
in  manner,  85-86,  in  matter,  80-87, 
inability  to  give  unity  to  stories,  87- 
88,  to  make  a  love  story,  loo-ioi, 
to  make  a  plot,  99-100,  to  reflect,  87, 
his  individuality,  107-109,  knowl- 
edge, 88-91,  politics  and  philosophy, 
103-105,  popularity,  80-91,  power 
of  improving  scenes,  91-94,  of  ob- 
servation, 88-8g,  purity,  101-102; 
his  sentiment,  102-103,  taste,  106- 
107;  unmorality  of  some  of  his  crea- 
tions, 95-99; 

Notes  on,  341-342; 

Quoted,   80,   85-86,  89-90,  92-94, 
96; 

136,    160,     167,     168,     170,      237, 
256,  257,  354- 
Dickens,  80-110. 
Dictionary  0}  National  Biography,  338, 

358- 
Dido,  185. 
DiLKE,   167. 

Dion  Cassius,  23. 

Dioneo,  198,  199. 

DiONYSius,  xii. 

Dissertations  and  Discussions,  354. 

Divina  Commedia,  xvii,  324,  326. 

Dr.  Parr,  or  Whiggism  in  its  Relation  to 

Literature,  quoted,  19-21;    17,  18. 
Dodson,  96. 
Donne,  quoted,  49,  51-59  passim;  46, 

48,  339- 

Don  Quixote,  244. 

Drapier's  Letters,  4-12,  15;   see  Swift. 

Dream  upon  the  Universe,  39. 

Dream-Fugue,  41. 

Dreaming,  24. 

Dreamland,  quoted,   147,  148. 

Dryden,  Preface  to  the  Fables,  181- 
201,  apology  for  his  writings,  199-201, 
on  Boccaccio,  197,  Chaucer,  189-196, 
—  largeness,  192-194,  naturalness, 
190-192,  originality,  197,  reasons  for 
translating  him,  194-196,  his  verse, 
190,  195-196,  —  comparison  of  Chau- 
cer and  Boccaccio,  182-184,  187-188, 
193-194,  197,  of  Chaucer  and  Ovid, 
187-189,  of  Virgil  and  Homer,   185- 


187,  on  epic  poetry,  186,   occasion  of 
translation,  1 81-184,  purpose  of  trans- 
lation, 184,  views  on  translation,  181- 
182;  Ai-nold  on  Dryden  as  poet,  284- 
286,  as  prose-writer,  285,  Macaulay's 
opinion  of  the  Fables,  62. 
Notes  on,  344-345. 
Quoted,  280,  286. 
vi,  xii,  XXV,   45,  58,    62,    68,    234, 
281,  350,  353.  356. 
Dumas,  256. 
Duncan,  230. 
Duncan  Gray,  287,  291. 

Early  Memorials  of  Grasmere,  ^^,  34. 

Earthly  Paradise,  xiv. 

Ecrivains  Francises,  159,  170. 

Edgar  Allan  Poe,   137. 

Edgar  Poe  and  His  Critics,  127, 128, 135. 

Edward  III.,  191. 

Effect  in  composition,   258. 

El  Dorado,  151. 

Elements  of  Drawing,   206. 

Elements  of  epic  poetry,  186. 

Elements  of  literary  criticism,  xviii. 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  182. 

Elizabctltan  Lyric,   339,  356. 

Elocution,  223-225. 

Emerson,  xviii,  xxv,  340. 

Emiha,  189. 

Emma,  xxx. 

Encyclopedia  Britannica,  179. 

Enfield  Speakers,  222. 

English  Composition,  xxviii,  357. 

English  in  Ireland,   10. 

English  Literary  Criticism,  vi,  359. 

English  Mail  Coach,  34,  40-41,  338. 

EnglishMenof  Letters,  338,339,356,^57. 

English  Poets,  269,  353,  359. 

English  Verse,  346,  356. 

Ennius,  188,  190,  321. 

Ephemera  Critica,  ix,  356. 

Epistle  Dedicatory  to  the  Rival  Ladies, 

345- 
Epitaph,  quoted,  220. 
Erskine,  339,   356. 
Essay  on  Death,  312. 
Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy,  345. 
Essays  in  Criticism,  x,  356. 
Essays  in  Criticism,  second  series,  ix, 

269,  341,  343.  352,  356- 


366 


INDEX 


Essays  of  John  Dryden,  344,  357. 

Essays  of  Shelley,  307. 

Essays  towards  a  Critical  Metlwd,  344, 

358- 
Essenes,   16,   17,   23,   24. 
Ethics,  205. 
Euganean  Hills,  212. 
Euphrasia,  228. 

Eureka,  140,  i6r,  162,  170,  175. 
Euripides,  22,  316. 
Evans,  236. 

Eve  of  St.  Agnes,  xxviii,  1 14. 
Examiner,  6. 
Excursion,  115,  343. 

Fable  for  Critics,   160,   178. 

Fables,  62,  344. 

Fairfax,  182,  190. 

Fairy  Queen,  326. 

Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher,  139,  159, 
162. 

Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher  and  Other 
Tales  and  Prose  Writings,  357. 

Fallacies  in  the  estimate  of  poetry, 
271-275. 

Falsification  of  English  History,  25,  30. 

Falstaff,  96,  97,  236,  342. 

Fancy,  iii. 

Farewell  to  Nancy,  290. 

Fatal  Marksman,   35. 

Faust,  291. 

Ferdinand,  234. 

Fiametta,   198,   199. 

Fiction,  naturab'sm  in,  157-158;  quali- 
ties of  enduring,  157;  realism  in,  158- 
161  {see  James,  Henry). 

Field,  xxxi. 

Fifty  Suggestions,  171. 

Filitim  Labyrinthi,  312. 

Flaubert,  249,  256. 

Fletcher,  201. 

For  Annie,  151. 

For  a'  tliat,  and  a'  that,  288. 

Fors  Clavigera,  206,  218. 

Forster,  338,  356. 

Fortnightly  Review,  iii,  124. 

FOUQUE,  168. 

Four  Ages  of  Poetry,  307,  355,  357. 

Franklin,  xxx. 

Eraser,  167. 

French  and  English  Manners,  17. 


French  Poets  and  Novelists,  141. 
Friar,  191. 
Froude,  10. 
Fuller,  165. 

Gabriel,  78. 

Gainsborough,  114. 

Galeotto,  324. 

Gamester,  228. 

Gamp,  Mrs.,  91,  102,  108. 

Garrick,  220,  224,  228,  229,  231. 

Gates,  340,  356. 

Gautier,   113,  153. 

Gayley,  vi,  356,  350. 

Genesis  of  the  Raven,   144. 

Genius,  classification  of  men  of,  81-84. 

Genre  criticism,  xvi-xvii,  339. 

George    Eliot,    xxvii,    xxviii,    xxxii, 

xxxiii,    160,    165,    254. 
George  Sand,   118. 
George  I.,  12. 
George  II.,  11. 
Gertrude,  236. 
Gerusalemme  Liberata,   326 
Gibbon,  210,  240,  329. 
Gilfillan,  127,  134,  136. 
Gill,  131,  140,  141. 
Glance  at  the  Works  of  Mackintosh,  25. 
Glenalvon,  230. 
Globe,  64. 

Glory  of  Motion,  40,  41. 
Glover,  359. 
Godfrey  of  Bulloign,  182. 
Godwin,  257. 

Goethe,  x,  18,  137,  153,  291, 
Goethe,  17,  18. 
Goethe  Reflected  in  his  Novel  of  Wilhelm 

Meister,  25. 
Gold  Bug,   139,    172. 
Goldsmith,  207. 
De  Goncourt,  253. 
Good  Parson,  the,  191,  192. 
Gordon,  85,  86. 
Gosse,  xxvii. 
Gower,  190. 
Graham,  130. 
Graliam's  Magazine,  156. 
Gray,  75,  286,  287. 
Greatness  in  Literature,   358. 
Great  Writers,  338,  357. 
Greece  under  the  Romans,  17. 


INDEX 


367 


Greek  Literature,  classification  of,  21- 

23- 
Green,  34. 

Gresset,  162. 

Grimm,  209. 

Griswold,  quoted,  139;  xxvi,  127,  130, 

136,  139,  140,  141,  146,  147.  177- 
Grizild,  187. 

Gulliver's  Travels,  154,  338. 
Gummere,  346,  357. 
G  usTAVus- Adolphus,  36. 

Hack  work,  bad  effect  of,  168,  169. 

Halifax,  62. 

Hallam,  83. 

Hallowe'en,  288. 

Hamilton,  163. 

Hamlet,  popularity  with  actors,  223- 
225,  ruined  by  acting,  224,  vul- 
garized by  actors,  226-228;  97,  221, 
236,  276,  349. 

Hamlet,  xvii,  222. 

Hampden,  6. 

Handbook  0}  Poetics,  346,  357. 

Hannibal,  322. 

Hans  Pjaall,  139,  155,  156. 

Hajjpy  Life  of  a  Parish  Priest,  39. 

Harbours  of  England,  213,  215. 

Harley,  I,  63. 

Harper's  Magazine,  177. 

Harrington,  190. 

Harrison,  on  Ruskin  as  a  Master  of 
Prose,  202-219  {see  Ruskin);  notes 
on,  345-348;    quoted,  34S;    xvii,  xx, 

357- 
Haunted  Palace,  145,  146. 
Hawthorne,  xviii,  136,  158,  167,  169, 

248. 
Hawthorne,  136,  146,  166. 
Hawtrey,  translation  quoted,   275. 
Hazlitt,    quoted,     346-347;      vi,     xx, 

xxvii,     343,     348,     349,     350,     357; 

Collected  Works  of,  359. 
Hector,  185,  314. 
Hegel,  175. 
Helen,  276. 
Hemans,  xxxi. 
Hennequin,  xvi,   159,   168,   170,   179, 

357- 
Henry  IV.,  191. 
Henry  IV.,  276. 


Henry  V.,  222. 

Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow,  338,  356. 

Herder,  17,  18. 

Heretics,  xiii,  350,  356. 

d'HERiCAULT,  quoted,  272. 

Herodotus,  22,  313. 

Heroic  Plays,  345. 

Herschel,  155. 

Hesiod,  23. 

Hill,  228. 

Historic  estimate,  271-275. 

Historico-Crilical     Inquiry     into      the 

Origin     of     the     Rosicrucians     and 

Freemasons,  17. 
History  of  Criticism,  xii,  350,  358. 
History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  10. 
Hobbes,  27,  182,  185. 
Hodgson,  31. 
Holkerstein,  36. 
Holmes,  xxxi,  141. 
Holy  Fair,  288. 
Homer,    compared    with    Virgil,    185- 

187;   quoted,  275,  276;    23,  189,  215, 

276,  285,  314,  315,  316,  320,  326,  333, 

345- 
Homer  and  the  Homerida,  17. 
Hood,  167. 
Hop  Frog,  177. 
Horace,   quoted,    184,    196;    61,    145, 

162,    164,    187,    189,   190,    191,   200, 

321,  32,3,  345- 
Horatio,  276. 
Horne,  168. 

Hours  in  a  Library,  i,  °    343,  358. 
House  Beautiful,  123. 
Howard,  ii,  12. 
Howells,  quoted,  x;    xi,  xx,  154,  351, 

357- 
Hugo,  113,  118. 

Humble  Retnonstrance,  350,  358. 
Hume,  27,  206,  207,  329. 
Humour,  164-165. 
Hunt,  xxvii. 
Hunting  the  Boar,  181. 

HUYSMANS,    152. 

lago,  165,   166,  230. 
Idea  of  a  Universal  History  on  a  Cos- 
mopolitan Plan,  24,  26. 
Idiot  Boy,  161. 
Idol  of  the  Tliealre,  163. 


368 


INDEX 


Idylls  of  the  King,  i6i. 

Iliad,  62,  163,  181,  185,  ig8,  275,  276. 

Imagery  in  Shakespeare's  poetry,  302- 

305- 
Imagination,      in;       compared     with 

fancy,  in;    with  reason,  307. 
Imilation,    quoted,    274. 
Imogen,  228. 
Imj)  of  the  Perverse,  160. 
Impressionism,  xviii-xix,  342-343. 
Incognito,  or  Count  Fitzhum,  35. 
Inductive  criticism,  xx. 
Inferno,  72,  276. 
Ingram,  quoted,   130,   136;    131,   135, 

136,  138,  146,  160,  161,  169,  173,  17s, 
177. 

In  M emoriam,  209. 

Interpretation  of  literature,  xvii-xviii. 

Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  Europe, 

83- 
Introduction     to     the     Materials     and 

Methods  of  Literary  Criticism,  vi,  350, 

356. 
Irish  Coinage,  5. 
Isabella,  228. 
Isaiah,  322. 
Isaiah,  299. 
Island  of  Sleep,  147. 

ISOCRATES,    23. 

James,  Henry,  on  The  Art  of  Fiction, 
237-256:    Besant's  view  of  the  novel, 

137.  138,  definition  of  the  novel, 
242-243,  fiction  essentially  serious, 
238-240,  a  fine  art,  240-241,  futility 
of  "laws"  and  distinctions,  243-249, 
lack  of  theory  in  English  fiction,  237- 
238,  morality  in  fiction,  254-255, 
need  for  freedom,  242,  256,  popular 
view  of  fiction,  241,  purpose  in  fic- 
tion, 255,  "romance"  and  "novel," 
248-249,  the  "story,"  251-254, 
ultimate  test  of,  249-251,  vulgariza- 
tion of  fiction,  242; 

Notes  on,  350-351; 

Quoted,  141,   153,   351; 

136.  141,   144,  146,   153,  154,  166, 

167,  357- 
James,  William,  xii,  357. 
Jeffrey,  xix,  xx,  xxvii,  31,  340,  343, 

354,  357- 


Jesus,  322,  323. 

Jevons,  176. 

Jingle,  Alfred,  104. 

Joan  of  Arc,  34,  35,  40. 

Job,   77,   310,   322. 

John  Keats,  25. 

John  of  Gaunt,  191. 

John  Paul  Frederick  Richler,   25. 

Johnson,  Esther,  12  {see  Stella). 

Johnson,  Samuel,  on  Tlie  Metaphysi- 
cal Poets,  45-59  :    characterization  of 
the  genre,  45-48,    illustrated,  48-59; 
Notes  on,  339-340; 
Quoted,  339,  340 ; 
vi,  xvi,    xxiii,  xxv,  19,    20,    31,    62, 
137,  281,  284,  345,  350,  357. 

Jolly  Beggars,  291. 

JoNSON,  xxvii,  48,  226,  345. 

JOSEPHUS,    24. 

Journal  of  Julius  Rodman,  160. 

Judas,  24. 

Judas  Iscariot,  17,  23,  24. 

Judicial  Criticism,  xix-xx. 

Juggernaut  of  Social  Life,  25. 

Julian,  23. 

Juliet,  223,  228,  349. 

Julius  Cassar,  19. 

Juvenal,  200. 

Kames,  xix. 

Kant,  24,  25,  26,  175. 

Kant  in  his  Miscellaneous  Essays,  24. 

Keats,  ix,  xxviii,  xxxii,  114,  138,  144, 

216,  281,  282. 
Kemble,  221,  230. 
Kendal,  6,  10 
Ker,  344,  345,  357. 
King  Arthur,  200. 
King  Lear,  317. 
King  of  Hayti,  35. 

Klosterheim,   summarized,  36-38;  338. 
Knight,  113. 
Knowledge,  quoted,  48. 

La  Belle  Heaulmiere,  283. 

La  Critique  Scientifique,   xvi,   357. 

Lady  Gcraldine^s  Courtship,  142. 

Lady  of  Shalott,  161. 

Lady- Prioress,  193. 

Lagrange,  175. 

Lamarck,  131. 


INDEX 


369 


Lamb,  Charles,  On  the  Tragedies  of 
Sliakespeare,  220-236  {see  Shake- 
speare) ; 

Notes  on,  348-350; 
Quoted,  348,  349; 
xix,    XXV,    xxvii,    xxxii,    133,    134, 
136,  138,  154,  168,  207,  339,  357; 

Poems,   Plays,   and   Miscellaneous 
Essays  of,  357. 

Lamb,  Mary,  134. 

Lamont,  quoted,  xxviii;    357. 

Landa,  158,  161. 

Landgrave,  36,  37,  38. 

Landor,  xxxii. 

Lang,  141,  142,  171. 

Language,    25,    31. 

Langue  d'oc,  279. 

Langue  d'oil,  279. 

Lanier,  162,  175. 

La  Place,  33,  176. 

Last  Days  of  E.  A.  Poe,  129. 

Last  Days  of  Immanuel  Kant,  17,  18. 

Laura,  203. 

Laws  of  fiction,  243-245. 

Lear,  impossibility  of  acting,  231-232; 
97.  348. 

Lear,  304,  355. 

Lecky,  10. 

Lectures  and  Addresses,   343,   358. 

Lectures  on  Literature  and  Literary 
Subjects,  353. 

Lectures  on  Shakespeare,  349,  353,  356. 

Lee,  xvi,  344,  357. 

Legion  Club,  13. 

Leicester,   194,   196. 

Lemaitre,  xix. 

Lenore,   142,    144,   344. 

Lessing,  17,  18. 

Letter  on  the  Sacramental  Test,  2. 

Letters  to  a  Young  Man  whose  Educa- 
tion has    been   neglected,  24,  25,  31. 

Levana  and  Our  Ladies  of  Sorrow, 
quoted,   42-44;     34,    4i- 

Lever,  16S. 

L'  evolution  des  genres  dans  Vhisloire  de 
la  litterature,  339,  356. 

Lewes,  xxvii. 

Liberal,  307. 

Life  and  Letters  of  Leslie  Stephen,  x,  xi, 

357- 
Life  and  Letters  of  Macaulay,  342,  358. 

2  B 


Life  in  Poetry,  Law  in  Taste,  xiv,   356. 

Life  of  De  Quincey,  16,  357. 

Life  of  Poe:  Gill's,  131;  Ingram's, 
130,  131,  138,  143,  146,  17s;  Stod- 
dard's, 131,   149,  165. 

Life  of  Sheridan,  loi. 

Life  of  Swift,  1 ;  also,  for  various  lives, 
338,  356,  358. 

Life  of  William  Morris,  xi,  357. 

Life  of  W ill iamSltakespeare,xvi,  244, 357- 
Ligeia,  139,  159. 

LiLLO,   225. 

Literary  classification  {see  Literary 
Criticism,  and  Literature). 

Literary  criticism  {see  also  Criticism, 
Fiction,  Poetry,  etc.);  accord  with 
common  taste,  xxiv;  as  affected  by 
temperament,  xii,  xiii,  xiv,  aim  of, 
XV,  analysis  of,  xxvi,  xxvii,  appeal  of, 
183,  authors  quoted  on,  ix-xi, 
classes  of,  xv-xviii,  commercial, 
66-67,  common  method  of,  132, 
comparative  poverty  of  English,  169- 
170,  conflict  between  liberty  and 
authority,  xiv,  conventional  types  of, 
xxii,  corroborative  effort  of,  xxiv, 
as  a  cult-idea,  xxiv,  defined,  xv, 
xxvi,  defined  by  form,  xxi,  as 
demonstration,  xiv,  different  points 
of  view,  xiii,  different  types  of,  168- 
170,  discrepancies  in,  ix,  xi,  ele- 
ments of,  xviii,  as  essay  writing,  169, 
essential  lack  of  precision  in,  xv, 
excellence  of  French,  169-170, 
examples  of  student,  xxviii-xxix,  as 
existential  fact,  xii,  as  expression  of 
personal  opinion,  xi— xii,  fallacies 
in,  — the  confusion  of  types,  160,  of 
depreciation,  153-154,  of  "heart  and 
head,"  160,  of  local  dishke,  141,  of 
argument  from  mental  weakness, 
137-139,  of  published  sentiment, 
135,  of  "seriousness,"  154, — ^  as  a 
fine  art,  166,  as  form,  xiv,  as  a  form 
of  discourse,  xxii,  impossibility  of 
final  judgments,  xii,  influence  of, 
63-67,  kinds  of  proof  in,  xxiii,  law 
in,  xiv,  methods  of,  63-67,  need  of 
biographical  facts  in,  127-139,  of  a 
general  survey  of  the  facts,  1 40-1 41, 
of  periodical  rejudgments,  126,   occa- 


370 


INDEX 


sion  of,  xxii,  as  a  process,  xiv,  pro- 
gram for  writing,  xxxi-xxxiii,  proof  of 
opinion,  xxii-xxvi,  provincialism  in, 
1 66,  reading  of,  xxvi-xxvii,  reason- 
ing in,  167,  169,  relation  to  narra- 
tion, exposition,  description,  and 
argumentation,  xxii,  to  rhetoric,  xxi, 
xxii,  sanction  of  opinion  in  popular 
acceptance,  xxiv,  as  science,  169, 
scientific  checks  on  opinion,  xxv- 
xxvi,  special  issues  in,  337-355 
(passim),  student,  xxviii,  xxix,  as 
taste,  xxiv,  types  of,  xviii-xxi. 
typical  faults  of  student,  xxix-xxxi, 
vagueness  in  terminolog}',  xiii,  vari- 
ous masters  of,  xxvii,  various  opin- 
ions of,  ix,  X,  xi,  variousness  of 
demonstration  in,  xxiii,  the  writing 
of,  xxviii-xxxiii. 

Literary  interpretation,   xvii-xviii. 

Literary  Messenger,  177. 

Literary  opinion,  growth  of,  65-66. 

Literary  Reminiscences,    343,    356. 

Literary  Studies,  xxxi,  80,  343,  356. 

Literature,  classification  of,  32-33,  338, 
341,  inadequacy  of  definitions  of,  xv; 
its  permanence,  329,  its  transitoriness, 
66,  67. 

Littlewit,  i8g. 

Lives  of  the  Poets,  45,  340,  357. 

LiVY,  313,  321. 

Loci  Crilici,  vi,  358. 

Locke,  John,  329. 

Locke,  R.  A.,  155. 

Logic  oj  Political  Economy,  25,  30. 

London  Magazine,  39. 

Longfellow,  translation  quoted,  72; 
146,  147,  167. 

LONGINUS,  xii,   186. 

Longmans'  Magazine,  237. 

Lord  Carlisle  on  Pope,  25,  31. 

Lord  oj  the  Isles,  quoted,  69. 

LouNSBURY,  xvi,  345,  350,  357. 

Love  stories,  nature  of,  1 00-101. 

Lover  neither  Dead  nor  Alive,  55. 

Lover's  Heart  a  Hand  Grenada,  55. 

Lowell,  vi,  xvii,  xxvii,  xx.xi,  159,  160, 
165,  166,  167,  175,  178,  343.  357; 
The  Writings  oj,  357; 
Prose  Works,  xvii,  343. 

LUCAN,   189,   316,  326. 


LucHN,  23,  147. 

LuciLius,  190. 

Lucrece,  300. 

Lucretia,  305. 

Lucretius,  190,  221,  321,  326. 

Lucy  Gray,  141. 

Lusiad,  326. 

Luther,  137,  327. 

Lydgate,  190. 

Lyrical  Ballads,  origin  of  the,  294-295 ; 

preface  to,  295;  355. 
Lyrical  Prose  Phantasy,  39. 
Lysippus,  22. 
Lytton,  160. 

Macaulay,  Mr.  Robert  Montgomery's 
Poems,  60-79  i^^^  Montgomery); 
notes  on,  340-341;   xx,  167,  168,  210, 

240,  341.  350- 
Macbeth,  230,  233. 
Macbeth,  Lady,  221,  228. 
Macbeth,  228,  233,  235,  236. 
Machiavelli,  319. 
Mackail,  xi,  357. 
Madeline,  xxix. 
M^cenas,  63,  191. 
Maelzel's  Chess  Player,  156,   158. 
M^vius,  335. 
Mahomet,  138. 
Maitland,  X,  xi,  357. 
Makers  of  Literature,  343,  359. 
Malthus,  25. 
Man  and  Superman,  358. 
Manilius,  187. 
Mantegna,  203. 
Manual  of  Conchology,  131. 
Marcus  Antoninus,  23. 
Marginalia,    167,    170,    171. 
Mar  got  la  Bala  free,    252. 
Marino,  48. 
Marot,  272. 

Marquis  Wellesley,  17,  18. 
Martial,  189,  200. 
Martin,  77. 

Martin  Chuzzlewit,  91,  loi. 
Mason,  6. 
"Masque,"  37,  38. 
Masque  of  the  Red  Death,  1 59. 
MassON,  De  Quincey's  Writings,  17-44 

(see    De  Quincey);  notes     on,    338- 

339.  344,  357- 


INDEX 


371 


Mater  Lachrymarum,  42,  43,  44. 

Mater  Suspiriorum,  43,  44. 

Mater  Tenebrarum,  44. 

Maudsley,  138. 

Maximilian,  36,  37,   38. 

Measure  of  Value,  25. 

Meinhold,  118. 

Memorial     Chronology  on  a   new  and 

more  apprehensible  system,  25,  29. 
Memorial  Suspiria,   34,  41. 
Memories  and  Portraits,  350,  358. 
Menander,  23. 
Merchant,    the,    193. 
Metamorphoses,  181. 
Metaphysical     poetry,     characteristics, 

45-48;    illustrated,   48-59- 
Metaphysical  Poets,   45-59- 
Micawber,  244. 
Michael,  118. 

Michael  Angelo,  33,  231,  329. 
MiLBOURN,  195,  199,  201,  344. 
Mill,  xxvii,  xxviii,  31,  124,  176,  354. 
Miller,    the,    193. 
Millwood,  226. 
MiLtON,   quoted,    223,    235,    277,    285, 

333;  xxiv,  xxxi,  29,  48,  137,  182,  207, 

209,  210,  221,  274,  281,  283,  284,  285, 

306,  313,  319.  325.  326,  329. 
Milton,  17,  25,  31. 

Milton  vs.  Soidhey  and  Landor,  25,  31. 
MiNTO,  quoted,  179;    144.  15 7- 
Miracles  as  Subjects  0/  Testimony,  25,  27. 
Miranda,  234. 

Miscellanies,  ix,  342,  343.  352.  357,  358. 
Mr.  Robert  Montgomery's  Poems,  60- 

79    (see    Montgomery). 
Modern  American  Oratory,  xxii,  358. 
Modern  English  Prose,  xxxi,  356. 
Modern  Greece,   17,   19. 
Modern  Hutnanists,  xxi,  340,  352,  358. 
Modern  Painters,  xxii,   208,    211,    212, 

215.   218,  342,  358. 
Modern  Superstition,    17. 
Modest    Proposal    for    Preventing    the 

Children   of   Poor  People  in  Ireland 

from  being  a  Burden  to  llieir  Parents 

or  Country,  13-14. 
Moliere,  168. 
Monk,  the,  191. 
Montaigne,  188. 
Montesquieu,  132. 


Montgomery,  Criticism  by  Macaulay. 
his  absurdity,  70,  anachronisms,  72, 
artificiaUty,  73,  bad  anatomy,  72, 
bad  characterization,  77-78,  bad 
English,  74,  75,  76,  bad  logic,  74, 
bad  observation,  72,  bad  syntax, 
69,  71,  clumsiness,  69-70,  flat- 
ness, 68,  69,  faults  illustrated  by 
the  Omnipresence  of  the  Deity,  68- 
77,  by  Satan,  77-78,  an  illustration 
of  what  can  be  done  by  puffing,  67-68, 
looseness  of  structure,  71,  72,  77, 
obscurity,  73,  74,  plagiarism,  68, 
69,  profanity,  71,  redundancy,  72, 
silly  metaphysics,  74;  quoted,  68-76, 
78;    XX,  340,   350. 

Moon  Hoax,  155,  158. 

Moon  Story,  155. 

Moore,  George,  152. 

Moore,  Thomas,  62,  168. 

Moral  criticism  of  literature,  xviii. 

Morality  in  characterization,  Bagehot 
on,  95-99. 

Morality  in  fiction,  254-256. 

Morality  in  literature,   184. 

Morality  in  poetry,   301-302,   315-316. 

More,  Sir  T.,  quoted,  77. 

Morel  la,  139. 

Morice,  172. 

MoRLEY,  xxvii,  115,  124,  341,  343,  357- 

Morning   Chronicle,    80. 

Morning  Post,  77. 

Morris,  quoted,  xi. 

Moses,  322. 

MOTT,  138. 

Mould,  Mr.,  91. 

Mozart,  150. 

Mucklewrath,  i. 

Murder  considered  as  One  of  the  Fine 
Arts,  33,  34. 

Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue,  139,  156, 

159,  172. 
Murphy,  228. 
Myers,  xxvii. 
Mystery  of  Marie  Roget,  139,  156. 

Nancy,  98. 

Napoleon,  quoted,  270. 

Narcissus,  188. 

National  Temperance  Movements,  25,  26. 

Naturalism  in  fiction,  157-158. 


372 


INDEX 


Nature  in  poetn',  294. 

Nelson,  30. 

New  Eclectic  Magazine,  161. 

New  Essays  toward  a  Critical  Method, 
X,  xvi,  126,  343.  354,  358. 

Newgate  calendar,  19. 

Nkwton,  ^i^i- 

Nc^i'  York  Sun,  155. 

NiCHOL,  339,  344,  357- 

Nicholas  Nickleby,  80,  88. 

NONNUS,    326. 

NoRDAU,  172. 

Note  on  Hazlitt,   17. 

Note-taking  in  fiction,  246-247. 

Notes  from  tJte  Pocket-Book  oj  a  Late 
Opium-Eater,   24,   25. 

Notes  on  Godwin  and  Foster,  25. 

Notes  on  Walter  Savage  Landor,  25. 

Novel  (see  Besant,  Fiction,  James)  as 
an  artistic  thing,  240-241 ;  dis- 
tinguished from  the  Romance,  248- 
249;  essence  of,  242-243;  "laws" 
of,  243-245;  liking  the  test  of,  24Q- 
251;  material  of,  251-254;  morality 
in,  254-256;  need  of  a  theory  of, 
237-238;  seriousness  of,  238-240; 
vulgarization  of,   242. 

Obiter  Dicta,  134. 

Ode  on  the  Recollections  of  Early  Child- 

Jtood,  120,  122. 
Ode  to  the  Nightingale,  144. 
Odyssey,  185. 

QLdipus  Tyrannus,   317,   355. 
Of  his  Mistress  Bathing,  53. 
Ogilby,  199. 

Old  Curiosity  Slwp,  quoted,  89-90. 
Oliver,  274. 
Oliver  Goldsmith,  25. 
Oliver  Twist,  91,  97-99,  104. 
Ollier's  Literary  Magazine,  307. 
Omnipresence    of    the    Deity,     quoted, 

68-77  passim;    60. 
On  an  Inconstant  Woman,  53. 
On  Christianity  as  an  Organ  of  Political 

Movement,  25,  29. 
On  English  Prose,  348. 
On  Poetry  and  Poetic  Power,   294-306 

(see  Poetry). 
On  Style  in  Literature,  346,  348,  358. 
On  Suicide,  24. 


On  the  Knock  ingattheGate  in  Macbeth,  25. 
On    the    Political    Parties    of    Modern 

England,  25,  30. 
On  the  Tragedies  of  SJiakespeare,  220- 

236  (see  Lamb). 
On  the  Words  of  Brother  Protestants,  11. 
On  Translating  Homer,  164,  342,  353, 

356- 
On  War,  25,  26. 
On  Wordsworth's  Poetry,  25,  31. 
Ophelia,   97,   225,   227. 
Origen,  78,  120. 
Originality,   x,    107-109. 
Orion,  168. 

Orlando  Furioso,   326,   331. 
Ortliographic  Mutineers,  25. 
OSBURN,  20. 
OSSIAN,  XV. 

Othello,   221,   223,  225,   226,  232,  348, 

349- 
Othello,  304. 
Otway,  62. 
Our  Corner,   126. 
Ovid,    compared   with   Chaucer,    187- 

189;     quoted,    188;     181,     182,    195, 

198,  321,  345- 

Pacuvius,  321. 
Pagan  Oracles,  17,  23,  24. 
Page,  30. 

Palamon,    189,    198,    199. 
Palamon  and  Arcite,  187,   195,   198. 
Palimpsest  of  the  Human  Brain,  24,  25. 
Pallas,  265. 

Pall  Mall  Gazette,   252,   253,   255. 
Pamphlet  on  the   Use  of  Irish  Manu- 
factures, 3-4. 
Paradise  Lost,   76,   221,   259,  325,  326, 

331- 
Paradise,  276. 
Parr,  19-21,  30. 
Partial  Portraits,    237,   357. 
Pater,   on    Wordsworth,   111-125   (see 

Wordsworth);      notes    on,    342-343; 

quoted,  x,  342;  xi,  xix,  xxv,  340,  341, 

355.  357- 

Pathetic   Fallacy,    208. 

Pathetic  Fallacy,    342,    358. 

Patronage,  evils  of,  61-62;    emancipa- 
tion of  authors  from,  62-63. 

Pattison,  xxvii. 


INDEX 


373 


Paulina,    36,   ^^7,   38. 

Payne,  vi,  357. 

Peacock,  307,  355,  357. 

Peleus,  276. 

Peneus,  195. 

Percy  Bysshe  Shelley,  17. 

Perjed  Wagnerite,  xvii,  358. 

Pericles,  21,  22,  23. 

Perry,  351,  357. 

Persius,  187. 

Personal  estimate  in  criticism,  271,  288. 

Peterborough,  ii. 

Petrarch,  187,  203,  279,  324,  327,  329. 

Petronius,  quoted,  298. 

Phidias,  22. 

Philemon,  188. 

Philosophy  of  Composition,  257-268 
{see  Poe),  353,  357. 

Philosophy  oj  Furniture,   179. 

Philosophy  oj  Herodotus,   17,   19. 

Physick  and  Chirurgcry  for  a  Lover,  54. 

Pickwick,  Mr.,  92,  93,  95,  96,  104,  342. 

Pickwick  Papers,  quoted,  92-94;  80, 
91,    95-96,  99,  100,  103,  104,  108. 

Piers  Plowman,  191,  345. 

Pilpay,  60. 

Pinch,  Ruth,  loi. 

Pindar,  23. 

Pisistratus,  21. 

Pit  and  the  Pendulum,  159. 

Pitt,  30. 

Plato,  xii,  22,  26,  81,  82,  83,  299,  312, 
322,  323,  325. 

Plato's  Republic,   24,   26,  338. 

Plautus,  200. 

Plays  Pleasant  and  Unpleasant,  358. 

Pleasures  of  Hope,  74. 

Plutarch,  23,  313. 

Poe,  David,  128. 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  The  Philosophy 
of  Composition,  257-268:  composi- 
tion, effect  in,  258,  need  of  analysis 
of  the  processes  of,  258-259,  order 
in,  257,  popular  errors  in  regard  to, 
257-258,  composition  illustrated  by 
the  Raven:  climax,  263-264,  de- 
velopment, 266-268,  intention,  259, 
length,  259-260,  mood,  beautiful 
and    universal,   260-261,    originality, 

264,  refrain,    261-262,  rhythm,  264- 

265,  situation,  265-266,   tone,  261 ; 


Robertson  on  Poe,  126-180:  — 
Introduction,  necessity  of  rejudging 
the  case  of  Poe,  126,  because  of 
injustice  done  him,  127;  Life  and 
Character,  128-139:  compared 
with  Lamb,  133-134,  136,  and  other 
writers,  136-137,  disposition,  129- 
130,  heredity  and  training,  128-129, 
morality  in  literary  matters,  130-132, 
in  personal  matters,  132-137,  nature  of 
his  disease,  137-139,  and  malevolence 
of  critics  regarding  it,  139;  Per- 
sonality, 176-180,  essential  great- 
ness, 179-180;  Poetry,  140-153: 
critical  disparagement  of  Poe,  141- 
142,  disposition  of  his  censors,  140, 
disproportionate  amount  of  atten- 
tion given  to  his  poetry,  140, 
essenti  al  quality  of  his  verse,  143-153: 
inferior  work,  143-144,  his  valuable 
work,  144-153, — its  art,  146,  lyric 
power,  151-153,  originality,  147- 
148,  sense  for  allegory,  1 50-1 51, 
spirituality,  145,  variety,  151-153, 
vividness  and  power,  148-149; 
Prose,  153-176,  comparative  neg- 
lect of  it,  153  :  his  Literary  Criticism, 
1 64-1 71,  freedom  from  politics,  etc., 
1 70-1 71,  his  humour  essential  to  the 
understanding  of  the  criticism,  164- 
165,  its  intellectual  power,  169, 
reasoning  skill,  167-168,  scientific 
nature,  166-167,  superiority  to  con- 
temporary work,  167,  its  weaknesses, 
168;  Philosophic  Writings,  171-176: 
hampered  by  orthodoxy,  173-174, 
and  some  bad  logic,  174-175,  imagi- 
native and  poetical  quality,  171- 
173,  reasoning  power,  172-173, 
superiority  of  £Mrf^o,  176;  Scientific 
Writings,  1 61 -1 64:  expert  opinion 
on  the  scholarship  of  Poe,  161-163, 
refuted,  162-164;  Tales,  153-161: 
critical  views  of  them,  153-154, 
their  many  excellences,  156-157, 
intellectual  fibre,  154-156,  157,  160- 
161,  originality,  161,  psychologic 
realism,  158-159,  verisimilitude,  157- 
158,  vividness  and  compactness  of 
structure,    159-160; 

Notes  on,  343-344,  351; 


374 


INDEX 


PoE,  continued. 

:■  Quoted,  134,  13S1  143.  145.  146, 
147,  148,  149-150,  151-152,  155,  162, 
163,  167,  168,  169,  173,  174,  175.  264, 
266,   267,   268; 

xvi,   xvii,  xviii,  xx,  xxvi,  xxx,  352, 

353.  354,  355.   357- 
Foe,  126-180. 
PoE,  W.  H.,  128. 
Poem,  limit  of  length  in,  259-260. 
Poems,  by  M.  Arnold,  83. 
Poe's    Eureka    and    Recent    Scientific 

'  Speculations,  161. 
Poe's  Works,  127,   131,   147,   160,   171, 

173,  174,175.  177- 

Poet,  his  mission,  299-300  {see  Poetry). 

Poetical  Propagation  0}  Light,  55. 

Poetic  Principle,  147,  351,  357. 

Poetic  prose,  39,  205. 

Poetry:  authority  over  language,  art, 
and  social  relations,  310,  cardinal 
points  of,  294,  Christian  poetrj', 
322-324,  classes  of,  294,  connate 
with  the  origin  of  man,  307-308, 
course  of  English,  280-293,  Dante 
in  the  stream  of  poetry,  325-327, 
decline  of,  in  Greece,  319-322,  de- 
fined, 298,  distinguished  from  other 
literature,  297-298,  from  science, 
297,  difference  between  it  and  nar- 
ration, 313,  effect  of,  313-315.  ele- 
ments of  a  poem,  296-306,  essential 
poets,  312,  excellence  of  Athenian, 
316-317,  examples  of  unmetrical, 
299,  expression  of  the  eternal  order  of 
beautj',  309-310,  fallacies  in  the 
judgment  of,  271-275,  greatness, 
331-336,  illustrated  by  Venus  and 
Adonis,  300-306,  idea  of  love  in, 
324-325,  inevitableness,  311-312, 
as  an  imitative  art,  45,  inspiration, 
330-331.  material  of,  310-31 1, 
methods  of  the  study  of,  273-275, 
Milton  in  the  stream  of,  325-327, 
metre  and  harmony  in,  312, 
most  perfect  expression  of  the  in- 
visible. 311,  need  of  poetry,  270,  293, 
330,  need  of  a  high  standard,  270- 
271,  the  offspring  of  the  imagination, 
307-308,  parallel  between  intel- 
lectual greatness   and   poetic   excel- 


lence, 318-319,  partial  poets,  313, 
purpose  of,  297-298,  quahties  of, 
143-144.  3°o.  in  Rome,  321-322, 
seriousness  in,  278,  superficial  form, 
296-297,  superiority  to  reason,  327- 
329,  "touchstones"  for  judging 
poetry,  275-278,  ultimate  good  of, 
293,  utihty  of,  328-330. 

Poets  and  Poetry  oj  America,  136,  147. 

Polonius,  227. 

POLYBIUS,   23. 
POMPEY,   24. 

Pope,  as  poetical  classic,  284,  286,  287; 
quoted,  286;  10,  62,  68,  137,  338,  340, 

353- 
Pope,  17,  18. 

Popular  judgments,  66-67. 

Porphyro,  xxix. 

Posthumus,  223,  349. 

Postulates  of  Political  Economy,  176. 

PffiL'er  oj  Words,  172. 

Prater ita,  206,  218. 

Praxiteles,  2^. 

Preface  to  the  Fables,  1 81-201,  344. 

Prelude,  115,  121,  161. 

Presence  of  Mind,  25. 

Priam,  276. 

Principles  of  Science,   176. 

Prioress's  Tale,  281. 

Professor  Wilson,  17. 

Promelhetis  Unbound,  202. 

Prose,  requisites  of,  285  {see  Poetry). 

Prose  phantasy,  39. 

Prospero,  234. 

Protestantism,  quoted,  28-29;   25,  27. 

Puffing,    its   decadence,    67;    effect   on 

the  public,  65-66;   illustrated  by  Mr. 

Montgomery,    67-6S;     meanness   of, 

63,  65;    methods  and  tricks,  63-65; 

superceding  of  patronage,  63. 

PULTENEY,    12. 

Purloined  Letter,  159. 
Pythagoras,  23,  323. 

Querist,  14. 

QUINXTILIAN,  xii. 

Quintessence  of  Ibsenism,  358. 
QuiNTUS  Calaber,  326. 

Rachel,  123. 
Radcliffe,  38. 


INDEX 


375 


Ramsay,  xxxi. 

Raphael,  329,  333. 
Rationale  oj  Verse,  161,  164. 
Raven,    composition    of   the,    259-268; 
quoted,  264,  266,  267,  268;    142,  144, 

344,  SSI- 
Realism,    see   Fiction,    James,    Besant, 

Novel,  etc. 
Reason,  compared  with  imagination,  307. 
Recluse,  115. 

Recollections  of  the  Lake  Poets,  17. 
Reeve,  the,  193. 
Reflector,  220. 

Refrain,   261-262,   263-264. 
Regulus,  321. 
Renaissance,  x,  342,  343. 
Representative   Essays    on   the    Theory 

0}  Style,  346.  348,  356. 
Resolution  and  Independence,  114. 
Restoration  poetry  and  prose,  284-286. 
Retreat,  122. 

Revolt  of  a  Tartar  Tribe,  17,  18,  34. 
Revolution  in  Greece,   17. 
Revice  Content poraine,    170. 
Reynolds,  114. 
Rhetoric,  17,  19,  25,  31. 
Rhipaeus,  325. 
Rhythm,  264-265. 
Riclmrd  Bentley,  17,  18. 
Richard  II.,  191. 
Richard  III.,  229,  230. 
RiCHTER,  39,  40. 
RiNGWALT,  xxii,  358. 
Rip  Van  Winkle,  133. 
Robert,  King  of  Naples,  198. 
Robert  Browning,  350,  356. 
Robertson,  E.  S.,  358. 
Robertson,  F.  W.,  343,  358. 
Robertson,  J.  M.,  on  Foe,  126-180  (see 

Poe);    on  the  need  of  criticism,   x; 

notes     on,      343-344;       quoted,      x; 

xvii,    XX,   xxi,    xxvi,   xxvii,    340,    343, 

344,   352,   3S4,   358- 
Robinson  Crusoe,   157,   259. 
Rochester,  190. 
Roderick,  77. 
Roland,  274. 
Roman  Feasts,  187. 
Romance,  248-249. 
Romance   Poetry,    278-280. 
Romeo,  223,  349. 


Romola,  xxx. 

Rossetti,  D.  G.,  x,  xi. 

Rossetti,  M.  F.,  xvii,  358. 

Rousseau,  113,  325,  329. 

RusKiN,    Harrison    on,    202-219:     his 
alliteration,  209,  change  of  manner, 
217-218,  consonance,  209-213,  draw- 
backs,  205-206,   genius,   202,    great- 
ness,      218-219,       ideas,      203-204, 
imagination,     213-217,    lack    of    re- 
straint,     215-217,      length    of    sen- 
tences, 207,  215,    lucidity,    206-207, 
mastery  of  English,  202,    originaUty, 
217,    power  over   epithets,  208,    pro- 
fusion,     205-206,       qualities,       204, 
temperament,    202-203,    206; 
Notes   on,    345-348; 
Quoted,  208,  211, 212,214-215,  216; 
x.xii,  xxvii,  340,  342,  358. 

Ruskin  as  a  Master  of  Frose,  202-219. 

Ruth,  118. 

Saint  Agnes'  Eve,  xxviii,  114. 

St.  Bernard,  206. 

St.  Catharine  of  Siena,  123. 

St.  Francis,  203. 

St.  John  (see  Bolingbroke). 

Sainte-beuve,  x;    quoted,  270. 

Saintsbury,  quoted,  xii;  vi,  xxvii,  350, 

3S8. 
Samuel  Johnson,  338,  358. 
Sandys,  182. 
Sartor  Resartus,  217. 
Satan,  77,  78,  23c,  325. 
Satan,  quoted,  78;    60,  77. 
Saturday  Review,  108,  159. 
Savannah-la- Alar,    34,    41. 
Sawyer,  Bob,  95. 
Scenery,    stage,    235-236. 
Scenes  from  Polilian,  141. 
Schiller,  17. 
Schlosser's     Literary    History     of    the 

Eighteenth  Century,  25,  31. 
School  for  Scandal,  loi. 
Schubert,  150. 
schultze,  35. 
Science  in  Criticism,  344. 
Scientific  criticism,   xx. 
Scientific   Use  of  the  Imagination  and 

Other  Essays,  ij6. 
Scienza  Nuova,  26. 


376 


INDEX 


SciPio,  23. 

Scott,  F.  N.,  vi,  350. 

Scott,  Sir  W.,  quoted,  69;  x,   i,  38, 

62,  69,  70,  77,  338,  358. 
Scrihner's  Magazine,   129,   137. 

SCUDERY,   Ml.LE.  DE,    197. 

Secret  Societies,    17. 

Selections  from  the  Essays   of  Francis 
Jeffrey,  xx,  340,  356. 

Senancour,  113. 

Sentences,    207-208,    215. 

Seriousness    in     fiction,     238-239;     in 
poetry,   278. 

Seven  Lamps  of  Architectures,  205,  207, 
218. 

SJtadow,  139. 

Shadow  oj  Dante,  xvii,  358. 

Shakespeare,  Lamb  on  the  Tragedies 
of,  220-236:  deadening  effect  of  see- 
ing him  acted,  222,  essential  nature  of 
his  characters,  223,  fashion  for  act- 
ing, 221,  imaginative  quality,  233,  im- 
possibility of  his  being  acted,  222, 
especially  Hamlet,  223-225,  and 
Lear,  231-232,  mutilated  by  fol- 
lowers, 229,  231,  234,  his  natural- 
ness, 225,  observation  of  life,  226, 
results  of  seeing  him  acted,  222, 
spiritual  quality,  223,  vulgarization 
by  actors,  226-227; 
Notes  on,  348-350; 
Quoted,  70,  74,  228,  229,  276,  286, 

3°3,  304,  305.  322; 

X,  xvi,  xvii,  xxiii,  xxiv,  xxv,  65,  70, 
78,  82,  83,  97,  122,  276,  282,  283, 
291,  300,  302,  306,  325,  329,  341,  348, 

349.  350.  354- 
Shakespeare,  17,  18,  349,  356. 
Shakespeare  the  Man,  341. 
Sliakespeare's   Posthumous    Reputation, 

xvi,  344. 
Shakesperian  Wars,  xvi,  357. 
Shallow,  236. 
Shaw,  xvii,  349,  358. 
Shelley,  A  Defence  of  Poetry,  307-336 
(see  Poetry); 
Notes  on,  355; 
Quoted,  116,   292,   355; 
ix,  xviii,  xxiii,    114,   116,  209,  212, 
214,  215,  216,  292,  351,  358; 

Works  of,  in  prose  and  verse,  358. 


Sheridan,  R.  B.,  ioi. 

Sheridan,  T.,  ii. 

Shew,  quoted,  138;    137. 

Shipman,  the,   193. 

Short   View  of  the  Profaneness  of  the 

English  Stage,  344. 
SiDDONS,  221,  228,  348. 
Sidney,  xxvii,  345. 
Silence,  139. 
Sill,  xxxi. 

Sir  William  Hamilton,  17. 
Snodgrass,  Mr.,  96. 
Socrates,  22,   289. 
Solomon,  322. 
Some  Principles  of  Literary  Criticism, 

xiv,  359. 
Some  Words  with  a  Mummy,  171. 
Sonnet,  quoted,  303,  304. 
Sophocles,  22,  320. 
Sortilege  and  Astrology,  2^,  34. 
Southern  Literary  Messenger,   155. 
Southey,  17,  77,  136,  137,  279. 
Spanish  Military  Nun,  34. 
Specimens  of  Narration,  350,  356. 
Specimens    of    the    English    Dramatic 

Poets,  349,  357. 
Spencer,  172,  175,  176. 
Spenser,  182,  190,  281,  316,  325,  t,:^^. 
Spirit  of  the  Age,  343,  346,  359. 
Spurgeon,  103. 
Stage  machinery.hurtful  to  Shakespeare, 

234-235- 
Stanhope,  10. 
Statius,  61,  326. 
Stedman,     quoted,     137,     164,     178; 

xxvii,   127,   141,   150,   164,   175,   177, 

178.  344- 
Stephen,  Sir  J.,  quoted,  xi. 
Stephen,    L.,    on    Wood's   Halfpence, 

1-15  {see  Swift);    notes  on,  337-338; 

quoted,  x;    xv,  xxiii,  343,   358- 
Stevenson,  154,  253,  346,  348,  350,  358. 
Stoddard,  quoted,  149,  165,  177;  131, 

141,  150.  165. 
Stones  of  Venice,  218. 
Stringham,  quoted,  175. 
Structure  in  Verse,   264-268. 
Student   criticism,    quoted,    xxvii,  xxix. 
Studies  of  a  Biographer,  338,  358. 
Studies  in  Chaucer,  345,  357. 
Studies  in  Literature,  343,  357. 


INDEX 


377 


Studies  in  Structure  and  Style,  346,  356. 

Study  0}  Poetry,  269-293  {see  Arnold  and 
poetry);    345- 

Study  of  Prose  Fiction,  351,  357. 

Style,  quoted,  21-23;    17,  19,  25,  31. 

Subjunctive,  treatise  on,  163. 

Suckling,  48. 

Summoner,  the,  193. 

Sunderland,  6. 

Supernatural  in  poetry,  294. 

Suspiria  de  Profundis,   16,  34,  41. 

Swift,  Work  for  Ireland  {Wood^s 
Halfpence),  1-15:  Swift's  arguments 
against  Wood's  coinage,  4-8,  at- 
tempt to  reenter  English  politics, 
11-12,  compared  with  Berkeley,  15, 
criticism  of  his  position,  14-15, 
effect  of  his  victory,  9-1 1,  hatred  of 
oppression,  1-2,  literary  skill,  6,  7, 
13,  14,  main  issue  of  the  Drapier's 
Letters,  8,  origin  of  the  Drapier's 
Letters,  4,  policy  for  the  Irish,  7-8, 
popularity,  lo-ii,  temperament, 
temper,  and  sincerity,  2,  12,  13,  14, 
view  of  the  Irish,  2-3,  work  subse- 
quent to  the  Drapier's  Letters,  12-14, 
writings,  Drapier's  Letters,  4-10,  15, 
Legion  Club,  13,  Modest  Proposal, 
13-14,  Pamphlet  of  1720,  3-4, 
various  tracts,  12-13; 
Notes  on,  337-338; 
Quoted,  2,  3,  4,  II,  12,  13,  14; 
XV,  xvii,  xxiii,  xxxii,  154,  206, 
207,  210,  339. 

Swift's  Letters,  2,  3,  7,  12; 
Lives  of,  356-358. 

Swift's  Works,   i,  338,  358. 

Swinburne,  ix,  x,  xi,   150,   153,  343, 

352.  358. 
Sykes,  98. 

System  of  Logic,  1 76. 
System  of  the  Heavens  as  revealed  by 

Lord  Posse's  Telescope,  24,  25. 

Tacitus,  quoted,  190. 

Taillefer,  274. 

Tales  of  Mystery,  153,  154. 

Talleyrand,  82. 

Tamerlane,  141. 

Tarn  Glen,  291,  292. 

Tam  o'Slianter,  291. 


Taplcy,  Mark,  91. 

Tasso,  quoted,  ^^s;  61,  316,  325. 

Taste,  defined,  xxiv;    history  of,  xiv. 

Taste  of  Dickens,  106-107. 

Tate,  229. 

Taylor,  206,  207,  299. 

Tell-Tale  Heart,   159. 

Tempest,  234,  348. 

Tendencies  in  criticism,  xv-xxi. 

Tennyson,  quoted,  210,  2x6;  164,  167, 

179,  209,  215,  341,  351. 
Tennyson,     Ruskin,     Mill,    and    Other 

Literary   Estimates,    202,    357. 
Text  of  SJiakespeare,  350,  357. 
Textual  criticism,  xv. 
Thackeray,  xxvii,  81,  loi,  136,  158, 

160,   167,   237. 
Thcban  Sphinx,  25. 
Themistocles,  21. 
Theocritus,  23,  320. 
Theoria  Sacra,  299. 

Theory  and  Pract ice  of  Criticism,  xvi, 343 . 
Theory  of  Greek  Tragedy,  25,  31. 
These  id,  335. 

Thoreau,  xxix,  XXX,  178. 
Three  Ladies  of  Sorrow,  42. 
Three  Plays  for  Puritans,  358. 
Thucydides,  22,  108. 
Tillotson,  78. 
TiMi^us,  323. 
Times,  64. 

T intern  Abbey,  99,   120. 
Toad-in-the-hole,  34. 
To  a  Grecian  Urn,  xxix. 
To  a  Lady  who  wrote  Poesies  for  Rings, 

quoted,  50. 
To  Helen,  quoted,  144;    145. 
Toilette  of  a  Hebrew  Lady,  17. 
Tolstoy,  349,  358. 
Tone,  261-262. 

Tory's  Account  of  Toryism,  25,  30. 
Touchstones,  275-278. 
Translation,  181-182,  194-197. 
Treasure,  279. 
Treasure  Island,    154. 
Treatise  of  the  Astrolabe,  187. 
Trent,  xiv,  358. 
Trevelyan,  342,  358. 
Troilus  and  Cressida,  187. 
Trollope,  161,  239,  240. 
Trotter,  Job,  104. 


378 


INDEX 


True  History,  147. 
Tubal  Cain,  23. 
Tulliver,  Maggie,  xxx. 
Tully  (see  Cicero),  xix. 
turgenieff,  249. 
Turner,  206,  217. 
TuROLDUS,  274. 
Two  April  Mornings,  122. 
Tyndall,  176. 

Ulalume,  quoted,  149-150;    351. 
Uh'sses,  181,  185,  205,  314. 
Universal  Prayer,   77. 
Unto  this  Last,  207,  217,  218. 

Valentine    Vox,    168. 

Varied  Types,  350,  356. 

Varieties  oj  Religious  Experience,   xii, 

357- 

Varro,  321. 

Vaughn,  C.  E.,  vi,  359. 

Vaughan,  H.,  122. 

Venn,  x. 

Venus,  302. 

Venus  and  Adonis,  illustrative  of  choice 
of  subjects,  301-302;  of  depth  and 
energy  of  thought,  305-306;  of  ex- 
cellence of  versification,  301 ;  of 
imagery,  302-305;  of  poetic  power, 
300-306;    354,    355- 

Versification,  296-297,  301. 

Ver-Vert,  162. 

Vico,  26. 

Villon,  quoted,  283. 

Virgil,  compared  with  Homer,  185- 
187,  imitation  of  Homer,  185-187; 
quoted,  9;  189,  190,  191,  199,  285, 
297,  321.  325.  326,  zZi^  345- 

Vision  of  Sudden  Death,  40,  41. 

Vita  Nuova,  324. 

VlTET,     274,     275. 

Voltaire,  329. 

Walking  Stewart,   17,   18. 
Wallace,  xxviii. 
Walladmor,   25,    34. 
Waller,  48,  182,  190,  359. 
Walpole,  3,  4,  6,  8,  II,  12. 
Walter  Pater,  xvi,  356. 
Ward,  A.  W.,  xxvii. 
Ward,  T.  H.,  269,  353,  359. 


Wardle,  Mr.,  92,  93. 

Waverley  Novels,   86. 

Weller,   Mr.,   108. 

Weller,  Sam,  91,  92,  93,  108. 

Whately,  31. 

What  is  Art?  349,  358. 

Whistle  and  Fll  come  to  you,  291. 

Whistle  ffwre  the  lave  o't,  290. 

White  Doe  of  Rhylstone,  343. 

Whitman,    Mrs.,    quoted,    127;     134, 

135.  162,  177. 
Whitman,  W.,  171. 
Whitshed,  4,  9. 
Wickliff,  191. 
Wieland,  302. 
Wife  of  Bath,  193. 
Wife  of  Bath's  Tale,  188. 
WiUet,  85. 

William  the  Conqueror,  274. 
William  Wilson,  139,  159. 
Willis,  quoted,   136;    130. 
Winchester,  xiv,  359. 
Wit,  45- 
Wits,  45.  46. 

Wolfram  von  Eschenbach,  280. 
Wood,  nature  of  his  patent,  4-6;    7,  8, 

9- 
Woodberry,  xxvii,  127,  175,  343,  358. 

Wood's    Halfpence,    1-16    {see    Swift), 

338. 
Wordsworth,  Coleridge  on,  294-296: 
notion  of  the  language  of  real  Ufe, 
295,  permanent  excellence  of  his 
poetry,  295-296,  vogue,  295-296. 
Pater  on,  111-125,  basis  of  his  un- 
evenness,  111-1x2,  distinction  be- 
tween Fancy  and  Imagination,  iii, 
his  duality  of  moods,  112,  excellence 
as  a  training  in  poetrj',  11 2-1 13,  in- 
dividuality in  his  work,  iii,  necessity 
of  separating  the  good  from  the  bad, 
113,  the  residue,  11 3-1 24:  —  abil- 
ity to  appreciate  passion  in  the  lowly, 
1x8,  expression,  121-122,  imagina- 
tive moods,  1 21-122,  meditation  on 
nature,  116,  "pan-psychism,"  116, 
philosophy,  1 20-1 21,  sense  of  ex- 
pression in  natural  things,  113-114, 
sentiment,  116-117,  sincerity,  116, 
solemnity,  11 7-1 18,  his  unevenness, 
1 1 2-1 1 3,    his  value,  122-125; 


INDEX 


379 


Wordsworth,  continued. 

Notes  on,    342-343; 

Essays   on,    343; 

Quoted,   114,  115; 

ix.  xvi,  xxiv,  xxvii,  17,  29,  31,  32, 
90,  99,  137,  167,  209,  270,  282,  284, 
294,    29s.   341.    351.    352,  354,    355. 

359- 
Wordsworth,  ix,  in,  341,  357. 
Wordsworth,  Tennyson,  and  Browning, 

or  Pure,  Ornate,  and  Grotesque  Art 

in  Poetry,  xxxi,  341. 
Wordsworth  and  Byron,  ix. 


Wordsworth's  Complete  Poetical  Works, 

359- 
World  and  a  Clock,  54. 
Wyatt,  131. 
Wyndham,  Maximilian,  35. 


Xenophon,  22,  289. 
X-ing  a  Paragrab,   164. 


Zeus,  276. 

Zola,  157,  250,  256. 


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